


Agony of Lydia Fellowes

by CherylAH



Category: Deadwood
Genre: Alternate Universe - Western, Deadwood - Freeform, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-07
Updated: 2017-08-31
Packaged: 2018-07-12 22:45:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 22
Words: 59,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7126228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CherylAH/pseuds/CherylAH
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The talented David Milch created a masterpiece, where the fictitious walked amongst the living and both painting a history of Deadwood.  In the Agony of Lydia Fellowes, new fictitious characters are added to the fabric.  Lydia Fellowes Newton has married well and badly.  Forced into a loveless marriage, she engages is a platonic love affair with the notorious gunman, James Butler “Wild Bill” Hickok during his sojourn in Abilene.  Following the accidental shooting of Special Marshal Mike Williams by Hickok, the famous lawman hangs up his guns and in this story, turns over Williams’ orphaned daughter to Lydia and her husband, Frank.  Lydia and Wild Bill correspond, but do not reunite until 1876, when a wagon train, including Lydia and a newly married Hickok head to the notorious camp known as Deadwood.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first attempt at fanfiction.

The Conestoga wagon pulled to a halt. Deadwood – 75 miles. Lydia recognized the red slice of wood. Ilex verticillata – black alder or fever bush. The words were carved into the wood and filled with flake white. Flake white, lead.  
“If we don’t break another axel, we should be there in three days,” said Frank Newton.  
“You just cursed us,” muttered Addy from the back of the wagon.  
“You shut up, or I’ll put you out here!” growled Frank.  
The baby mewled.  
“Shut that brat up.” He swung and missed the child, hitting his wife in the mouth and splitting her lip. “Shit!”  
“It’s just time for her to eat, Frank.” Lydia glared at her husband as she wiped the back of her hand across her mouth – a trail of blood and saliva.  
“She’s always eating.”  
Dear God in heaven, he’s jealous of the baby at my breast. I can’t imagine what he’ll do once the twins are born. Of course, she hadn’t told Frank she was carrying two. Just as she hadn’t told the doctor her mouth filled with gall when he gave her the ‘blessed’ news.  
“Maybe we should rest the horses.”  
“Frank, there’s already a mile between us and the rest of the wagon train. This is Indian country, it’s not safe.”  
“They’ll send a rider back if we fall too far behind,” shouted Addy.  
And if its Bill Hickok or Charlie Utter, they’ll beat you within an inch of your sorry life, said Lydia to herself.  
“I suppose,” Frank flicked his wrists and the wagon lurched forward.  
Franklin Ellsworth Newton – of the Philadelphia Newtons. He had tipped his hat when he uttered his first words to her. They met at a tea at her alma mater, the Mount Holyoke Female Seminary. Franklin was in his final year at Harvard. With wavy blonde hair and blue eyes, he was handsome, courtly and charming. All the young ladies of her acquaintance were smitten with him and green with jealousy when he began to pursue her with ardor. Lydia thought him a poppinjay.  
But her father was impressed. Bursting with ambition, Erskine Fellowes had worked himself up from an apprentice gunsmith to the owner of his own munitions factory. He had made a small fortune in the Brother’s War, outfitting the Irish soldiers used by the Union generals as cannon fodder. And now that he was prosperous, he wanted respectability and the surest way to gain it was to marry his only daughter to a family of means and reputation. Sadly, he miscalculated and forced Lydia to accept Franklin’s proposal. Act in haste, repent in leisure.  
Franklin Ellsworth Newton’s, scion of the Philadelphia Newtons’ curriculum vitae read thusly:  
Attorney…well really a clerk. Dismissed from his position by his own father.  
Stock broker…well also a clerk. Dismissed for financial irregularities.  
Mercantile executive…in truth a stock clerk at Fassbender’s General Store in Abilene. Also dismissed for financial irregularities.  
And now gold prospector.  
But James Butler Hickok described him best. “That ne'er-do-well you share a bed with ain’t nothing more than a feckless shithead. Pardon my language.”  
Lydia sucked on her bleeding lip. It was swelling up and as fair as she was Lydia knew she’d be black and blue before dinner. She watched as her husband wiped his sweating palms on the legs of his trousers. He’s nervous. He’s usually so careful never to mark my face. He knows he’ll be Wild Bill Hickok’s punching bag before nightfall. “Addy, take your sister.”  
“She ain’t Emma’s sister!”  
“Addy’s my daughter and therefore she’s Emma’s sister,” Lydia bit out. She handed the baby to her adopted daughter and buttoned her blouse.  
“There are all kinds of cathouses in Deadwood. Some men like’em real young. Maybe we can put her to work. Her real mama was a whore. Like mother, like daughter.” Frank threw back his head and barked out a laugh.  
“Mrs. Williams was no such thing. She was a good, Christian woman.”  
“Sure she was,” snickered Frank.  
“I mean it Frank, you try it and I’ll kill you.”  
“I’m gonna tell Mr. Hickok you said that!” whispered Addy.  
“You say something?” shouted Frank.  
“Just soothing the baby, sir,” lied Addy.  
“Oh look,” smiled Lydia. “Here comes Charlie and Jane Cannary.”  
“She smells like shit,” muttered Frank, “and looks worse.”  
A little false bravado, dear husband. The color had drained from his face. Frank looked like a man on the bottom step of the gallows.  
“Saw some deer scat. Jane and I are gonna fetch us some fresh meat for dinner,” drawled Utter. “Just thought I’d check on y’all.”  
“Afternoon, missus…” Cannary stopped talking and tilted her head. “What’s wrong with your mouth?”  
“She fell,” lied Frank. “She’s clumsy, cause of the baby.”  
“Clumsy!” Jane Cannary was having none of it. “You’re a goddam cocksucker and a fuckin’ liar! She ain’t clumsy. If she had gone ass over tea kettle, I’d expect her dress to be dirty. That skirt she’s wearing is as neat and tidy and if she just took it off the washline.”  
Charlie Utter pulled his iron. Despite the fact the rest of him shook with anger, Charlie’s gun hand was steady. “Get down, Frank.”  
“I’ll go get Bill.” Cannary turned her horse and galloped back to the wagon train.  
“He’s been waiting to beat the shit out of you for years,” seethed Utter. “Had to talk him out of it when we first saw you in Cheyenne and he heard you speak disrespectful to your wife and daughter.”  
“She ain’t mine.”  
“Bill says he gave Mike Williams’ daughter to Lydia and to you to raise up and you agreed to it. That makes Addy your daughter in my book. She your daughter, Lydia?”  
“Yes, Charlie. She’s my daughter. She’s the sweetest, most loving child and I love her with all my heart.”  
“You love this son of a bitch?”  
“Never. Not one day.”  
Charlie shook his head. “I expect your mama and daddy thought they were doing you are great service marrying you off to some fancy pants Philadelphia lawyer.”  
“I believe they did.”  
“Well everyone makes a mistake.”  
“And they made a whopper.”  
“You little bitch!” screamed Frank. He raised his hand as if to strike her again, but caught himself.  
“Frank, I thought I told you to get down from that rig.”  
Lydia looked up to see Bill Hickok head sticking out of the back of Charlie’s wagon. In one fluid motion he jumped out of the wagon and onto the back of Jane’s horse. His face was a thundercloud.  
And Frank saw him too. The sweat of hard work smells very differently than that caused by fear and the acrid smell of Frank’s sweat was joined by something more pungent, the smells of piss and shit. Frank had soiled himself.  
Without a word, Bill got off Jane’s horse and walked to the back of the wagon.  
“Oh Lord, did he just shit himself?” Jane asked Lydia.  
“I believe so.”  
Jane smiled. “You, sir, have every right to be afraid, cause yer getting a whoopin’. We saw you raise your hand in anger. It was a motion well oiled, sir. That ain’t the first fat lip he’s given ya, is it Lydia?”  
“No it isn’t. Though most times he endeavors to spare my face.”  
“Most times he’s trying to beat me,” sobbed Addy from the back of the wagon. “But she doesn’t let him. He said he’s gonna sell me to a whorehouse once we get to Deadwood!”  
Frank just sat there, big fat tears splashing onto the backs of his hands.  
“Crying like a woman ain’t gonna get help you none now,” said Charlie Utter shaking his head.  
Lydia turned and watched Bill pull the saddle for the spare horse out of the wagon. He threw the saddle over the mare, cinched it and untied the lead. The horse nickered.  
“Hold this, Charlie.”  
“Sure thing Bill.  
Hickok walked around the front of the rig, his long fingers caressing the flank of the draft horse. Without a word, he pulled Frank from the bench seat and threw him to the ground. “You broke your word to me, Frank. After I gave you what for in Abilene, you gave me your word you would never raise your hand to Lydia again.”  
Frank was on his knees, his hands laced together in supplication. “I promise I won’t do it again.”  
“Your word ain’t worth spit,” said Hickok. “I never killed a man that didn’t need killing,” he sighed, “but you ain’t carrying, so I can’t shoot you honest.” He pulled his Navy Colts and placed them in Lydia’s lap along with his hat. He untied the leather sash, which he used in lieu of holsters, folded it in half and slowly wrapped the ends around his right hand.  
“Please!” Frank was begging. “Don’t beat me like you did in Abilene!”  
“Abilene was a love tap,” sneered Hickok before he cracked the leather across the side of Frank’s head. Blood started to pour out of the ear. “Always hated a bully, ain’t that right Charlie?”  
“Yes, Bill, it’s the goddamn truth.”  
“Know what else is true, Bill?” asked Jane.  
Hickok continued to play the makeshift whip across Frank’s head and shoulders. “What’s true, Jane?”  
“Bully ain’t nothing, but a coward. A cock-sucking coward.”  
Frank was screaming.  
Addy closed her eyes and covered her ears.  
As hard as Lydia tried to sit as still as stone, she flinched each time Hickok made purchase.  
The baby never woke.  
Bill unwrapped the leather sash from his hand and tossed it into the wagon. He pulled Frank to his feet and began to punch him, again and again. Lydia lost count after two dozen – four dozen if you counted the ricochet of Frank’s head off the wagon. And then, satisfied, Hickok stopped. Frank fell first to his knees, spitting out four teeth as he went down. As he pitched forward, Hickok gave him several kicks to the ribs. Then, he grabbed Frank by his belt and dragged him to the horse.  
“From this day forward, you are no longer her husband. Don’t you ever darken Lydia’s door again or I’ll kill you. You understand me, Frank?”  
“Yes,” whispered Frank through swollen lips.  
“I couldn’t hear you.”  
“I won’t ever darken her door again.”  
Hickok threw Frank over the saddle, but not before removing a purse of Eagles from his pocket. He turned the horse toward Cheyenne and slapped it on the hind quarters. He watched the mare kick up dust.  
“Charlie, I’ll be riding with Lydia.”  
Utter nodded. “Jane, best we be going.”


	2. Chapter 2

Hickok went to the water barrel and filled the ladle. He took a good long drink, before filling it a second time. This one he spilled over his hot and sore knuckles. He filled it a third time, “Lydia, you got a cloth? I don’t fancy sitting in Frank’s night soil.” He handed the ladle and purse to Lydia. “Let me check on Addy. I’ll be with you forthwith.”  
Lydia heard the creaking of the wagon and felt it shift under the weight of Hickok.  
“You okay, darling?”  
“Yes, sir.”  
“I’m so sorry you had to witness that, but you and I both know it needed doin’.”  
The little girl, all blonde curls and blue eyes reddened by tears, looked up at Hickok. “Is he gone? Is he gone for good?”  
“He’s gone. I don’t expect him back.”  
“Good. I had grown so weary of him hurtin’ mama.”  
“He hurt her often?”  
She nodded. “Most times he acted like wanted to hurt me, but sometimes I think it was a feint. He wanted to do her harm and he knew she would always protect me. Today, he hit mama by accident. He wanted to do harm to Emma.”  
“That so.”  
The little girl nodded and looked down at her sister.  
Hickok brushed a fat tear from her cheek. “Why don’t you lay down and have a good rest? I expect you haven’t slept too well always worrying about your mama.”  
“No, sir. He’s been a cur since we left Abilene. I’ve been sleeping with one eye opened. I was oft afraid he’d kick her in the belly.”  
Hickok pulled a quilt over the girl and kissed her on the forehead. She closed her eyes and he caressed her brow. She was asleep in minutes.  
“She looks more’n more like Mike every day,” said Lydia as he emerged from the back of the wagon onto the bench seat.  
“And smart as a whip, a real prodigy.”  
Lydia smiled. “She’s reading Aristotle…in the original Greek.”  
Hickok shook his head. “That’s why I gave her to you, you and Frank both with college diplomas…I thought I was doing the right thing.”  
Lydia smiled and grabbed his left hand. “You did. If I may say so myself, I’m an excellent mother. I am seeing to her education.”  
“So, she’s reading Aristotle. That’s an impressive bit of news.”  
“She’s also madly in love with Leonardo Fibonacci of Pisa. She’s despondent she doesn’t live in 13th century Italy. She’d marry him in a heartbeat and talk mathematics with him all day. Give her the slightest encouragement and she’ll write out his number sequence for you.”  
Hickok chuckled, picked up the reins and flicked his wrists. The wagon lurched forward.  
“How is your hand?”  
He flexed his fingers, his knuckles were cut and bruised. “I’ll live. He take all your money?”  
“No. I have a secret account in Cheyenne, but he use most of our joint money. He paid – sight unseen – $10,000 to for a claim. I’ve got the map here somewhere. It’s in both our names.”  
“You gonna pan for gold?” asked Hickok.  
“I guess I must and for as long as I can. I’ll have four sets of college tuitions to pay for.”  
“You’re having twins?”  
“That’s what the doctor said.”  
For several minutes Hickok was silent. He looked over his shoulder to make sure Addy was well and truly asleep. His voice was full of heartbreak, “They shoulda been mine. Why wouldn’t you leave Abilene with me?”  
Hers eyes filled with tears. “Propriety and stupidity. I thought my reputation was worth more than my happiness.”  
“You ain’t a stupid woman.” He put his left arm around her shoulders and brushed his lips against her temple.  
“Do you love her?” Lydia whispered into his shoulder.  
“Agnes?”  
He shook his head. “I got tender feelings for her, but I wouldn’t call it love. Truth be told I was ossified drunk when the preacher spoke words over us. I didn’t mean a word I said and I expect she didn’t either.”  
“Newspapers in Abilene said she lied about her age and yours on the marriage license.”  
“For once the funny papers are correct.”  
“Perhaps, the marriage is not valid.”  
“For our sake, I hope so. I’d like to be happy, truly happy, for once. I expect you feel the same. We’ll work this out when we get to Deadwood.”  
“You gonna prospect?”  
“Not if there’s a decent game of poker in Deadwood.” He gave her a long hard look. “I’m not what I once was.”  
“I’m not what I was either.”  
“Made quite a fool of myself in Cheyenne. Got arrested for vagrancy.”  
“I know. Don’t care.”  
“I think Agnes wants me to trick shoot in her circus, but the truth be told, my eyes are bothering me. Doctor calls it glaucoma.”  
“She always wanted you for an act, even when you were marshal. I’m as big as a house. Doctor calls it pregnancy.”  
Hickok chuckled. “What are you planning to name these young’uns?”  
“If they’re boys, William Alonzo and James Otis. If they’re girls, Celinda and Polly – middle name of Fellowes for both. Emma’s middle name is Pamela, also after your mother.”  
“That ne’er-do-well know you were naming your young’uns after my family?”  
Lydia smiled and shook her head. “He never guessed, nor did he care. Maybe I should just name the brother James Butler.”  
“Emma looks an awful lot like me.”  
“She does. Must have been wishful thinking on my part when I carried her.”  
Hickok, content the draft horses knew to follow the trail, dropped the reins and pulled Lydia into his arms. “Ain’t no law in Deadwood – not civil, not criminal. No one on this wagon train liked Frank, most hated him, and no one will speak ill against you. I want to be with you Lydia. I won’t hurt Agnes, but I’ll find a way to part from her and cleave to you. God put us together on this wagon train, we were meant to be together and we will.”  
“Do you think Frank will come back?”  
Hickok shrugged. “Not if he knows what’s good for him.”  
“That man could never see past the end of his own nose,” sighed Lydia.  
“I’m spending tonight in this wagon and every night till we get to Deadwood. Won’t be respectable, but I don’t care and I won’t have you or Addy afraid. I’m done playing I don’t love you, Lydia. I love you fierce and I don’t care who knows.”  
“I don’t give a whit what people say. I love you James Butler Hickok, I always have. I never cared one minute for Frank, but I loved you the first time I first saw you in Abilene.”  
Charlie and Jane were true to their words. The train feasted on venison, carrots and onions. One woman foraged for wild mushrooms and greens. They made a savory addition to the pot.  
“Uncle Bill?” Addy ran a biscuit through the venison gravy on her tin plate. “Do you think Mr. Newton will come back to us?”  
“Can’t say for sure, but I believe not and in my heart I hope not.”  
“Mama,” Addy looked up into the trees. “I don’t rightly know how to ask this question.”  
“Just ask.”  
“Mama, I don’t want Frank Newton’s name anymore.”  
Neither do I. “Do you want to go back to Williams?”  
The little girl shook her blonde curls. “If it’s alright with you, Uncle Bill, I’d like my name to be Hickok.”  
“It’s fine with me,” smiled Wild Bill. “Always wanted a prodigy for a daughter.”  
The little girl beamed. “Mama, can I get my slate and show Signori Fibonacci’s sequence to Uncle Bill.”  
“Finish your stew.”  
The little girl smiled, her mouth full of biscuit. She swallowed and ran to the wagon in search of her slate.  
“I’m gonna lie with you tonight. I’m gonna be respectful. I don’t want to rile them babies none.”  
Lydia smiled. Despite Wild Bill’s claims to the contrary, she was sure the camp would be afire with talk. She didn’t care.  
After Wild Bill had washed the tin plates and she had bathed herself, Emma and Addy in a nearby stream, Lydia climbed into the back of the wagon. She removed her maternity bodice and skirt and pulled a loose fitting chemise over her head. Addy was dozing. “We’re decent!” she laughed.  
Bill entered the back of the wagon, sat down and pulled off his boots. He cast Lydia a sideways look. In minutes, he had removed his Prince Albert frock coat, his shirt and britches, folding them neatly in a corner. Wearing his union suit he crawled to the mattress. “All set?”  
“Yes, sir,” answered Addy.  
He blew out the candle and settled in, spooning Lydia. He pulled her to him, one arm under her head and across to her left shoulder, the other warm on her belly. She could feel one of the babies moving toward the warmth of his hand. In the few times Frank had ever touched her the babies shrank to the other side, like they were already practicing running away from a backhanded slap. One of the twins pushed against Bill’s hand.  
“Would you look at that,” he whispered, awed. “It’s like they know I’m gonna be their pappy.”  
“Why did I wait so long?” Lydia asked.  
“Damned if I know.” He kissed the curls on the back of her head. “They will be mine, Lydia.” He smiled and for the first time since he accidentally put a bullet into Mike Williams, he fell stone cold sober into a blissful sleep.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to all who have read my work and have left a kudos. The wagon train arrives in Deadwood and the clock begins to tick for Wild Bill Hickok.

“There it is,” said Bill Hickok. The wagon train had come to a halt. By the sounds of Jane Cannary’s bellowing, the first wagon was caught in a rut.  
“So close and yet so far,” sighed Lydia. “Doesn’t look so bad from here, but when the breeze blows, it certainly does smell awful.”  
“You need to brace yourself. If Frank Newton hadn’t taken near’en all your money, I’d have turned us around. We’d each get a divorce in Cheyenne, then I’d take us some place no one would ever know us in Canada or Mexico; someplace despite those words in the funny papers ‘bout me, well we could live the rest of our lives in peace. Deadwood ain’t no place for most men, and it certainly ain’t no place for a lady and children. As rough as cowpokes talk, a mining camp’s worse.”  
“Lovely,” sighed Lydia. “Just what I need to build upon Addy’s already expansive vocabulary.”  
“What mama?”  
“There will be a lot of men cussing in Deadwood,” answered her mother.  
“More money for my cuss jar. Hope the emporium has lots of candy!”  
“Ain’t no emporium,” added Hickok.  
The seven year old scowled. “What?”  
“Ain’t no emporium, darlin’,” Hickok hid his smile. “Not like the one in Abilene.”  
“Is there a loaning library?”  
“Doubt it,” answered Hickok.  
Lydia watched the steam rise out of the top of her daughter’s head. “Can I order books from Mr. Utter?”  
Lydia smiled. Even when phrased as a question, her daughter’s sentences sounded more like a command. “I’m certain we can.”  
“I have my eye on Mr. Melville’s Moby Dick and Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons.”  
“And I want a collection of Mr. Poe’s stories and Longfellow’s translation of Dante.”  
“I’m sure Charlie can get’em fer ya,” answered Hickok.  
Lydia rested her head against Hickok’s arm. “When I woke this morning, something came over me. I made a vow to myself I won’t be the fearful woman I’ve been, a slave to the opinions of others.”  
“Intend to be fearless?” smiled Hickok.  
“That is my intention. Whether I succeed in its execution remains a matter of some discussion. I also decided I’m going to work the claim.”  
“Why not sell it back to that Swearengen feller who sold it to Frank or hire someone?”  
“Well, I was reading that geology book Frank bought and compared what I read to the claim elevation. I think, despite Frank’s previous efforts to make money, this claim might have gold. Secondly, unless I find the gold, what would be Swearengen’s incentive to buy it back?”  
“Good point.”  
“You gonna buy a claim?”  
“Maybe I’ll win one at poker.”  
“It’s an itch you just gotta scratch.”  
Hickok nodded, a doleful expression on his face. “It’s taken a good old grip on me. Cards and drinking both. And I’ve had a bad run of late. I’d like to think spending time in your company will be a balm to me, but sometimes…”  
“Its siren call is just too strong.”  
He nodded. “Charlie keeps trying to nudge me as a good friend should, but sometimes I want to shout at him to let me go to hell on my own terms.”  
Lydia blinked back tears. “Don’t leave me here alone.”  
“I’m gonna try not to, but as a woman for whom I have the utmost respect once said, ‘whether I succeed in its execution remains a matter of some discussion’.”  
Hickok flicked his wrist as the wagon in front of him lurched forward. From atop the wagon, he watched the first of the train work its way down the Black Hills and pull into the main thoroughfare of the camp. With each turn of the wagon wheel the smell of horseshit combined with human waste grew until it was nearly overpowering miasma. As the second and third wagons entered camp, Madame Mustachio and Dirty Em, two sporting women fresh from the Comstock and familiar to the miners, made their presence known to the cheering of men on the street.  
“Oh this place is wretched,” wailed Addy who worked her way up from the back of the wagon to peer between the shoulders of her mother and godfather.  
The soiled doves, wearing little more than corsets and combinations, waved to the new arrivals from the balcony of the Gem Saloon.  
“Do all those ladies have babies?” asked Addy pointing.  
“No.” Lydia was beet red to the roots of her hair. “Get back in the wagon.”  
“But why can we see their bosoms, if they aren’t feeding babies?”  
With that the two windows opened and the contents of piss pots were flung into the streets.  
“Jesus,” whispered Hickok. “I ever see the likes of Frank Newton again, I’ll kill him for bringing you to this place.  
“Stand in line,” joked Lydia as a third piss pot was tossed out yet another window. “What a quaint way the denizens of Deadwood have for welcoming new arrivals.”  
Hickok stopped the wagon in front of the Grand Central Hotel. “Well, it appears to be central,” he joked as he helped Lydia, Addy and Emma from the wagon. “From the look of the threadbare Turkey carpet, the jury’s out on how grand it is.”  
“Can’t wait to build my house,” sighed Lydia.  
“Charlie and I will secure the wagon.” He handed a portmanteau to Addy. “I’ll bring the rest of your things.”  
A strange little man watched from behind the counter. “E.B. Farnum, ma’am. I am the owner and proprietor of this establishment.”  
Addy sighed. “An owner is a proprietor. It’s redundant, like saying two twins.”  
“Hush Addy.”  
“Well, isn’t she the precocious one!” sneered Farnum.  
“I prefer prodigy,” clarified the seven-year-old. “Who’s that?” Addy asked pointing to an apparition in the corner.  
“Richardson, away! Crawl back under the rock from which you emanated!” He smoothed his frock coat from his shoulders to his waist, dislodging dandruff and dust onto the polished surface of the hotel counter. This Farnum whisked away with a practiced hand. Clearly, his palms were as wet as his forehead as the front of his coat looked like two very large slugs had journeyed there. “Well, then. The room is $3 per night, one week payable in advance.”  
Lydia eyed the bill of fare behind the counter. Farnum had recently increased his prices. She pulled his recent letter from her reticule. “I’m Mrs. Newton. You quoted me a guaranteed price of two dollars per room, per night until such time as the construction of my house is complete. I hope that you intend to honor your quotation.”  
“Perhaps, I’d best discuss this with Mr. Newton,” he sneered. “Discussions with the lesser sex adversely affect my digestion.”  
“No, you will discuss this with me. The state of your bowels is of little interest. ”  
“Isn’t your husband returning with your luggage?”  
“That is not my husband. That man was James Butler Hickok, my dearest friend and Addy’s godfather and guardian. Perhaps you wish to discuss with him the subterfuge of your changing prices.”  
Farnum gulped. The camp had been awash with rumor Wild Bill Hickok was on his way into Deadwood. He needed to relay this tidbit to Al Swearengen.  
The contents of yet another piss pot splattered on the sidewalk. The smell of urine filled the lobby. Farnum raised his right arm and like a very bad actor and recited, “Over two thousand years ago, the fabled King Minos of Crete is said to have possessed the first flushing toilet!”  
“And let us not give short shrift to the Roman baths,” sighed Lydia as she counted out her fourteen dollars. “One week in advance. My key.” She held out her hand.  
For a moment, Farnum looked at her hand as he would an asp slithering across his counter. He pulled a key from a cubbyhole and a white ceramic piss pot from under the counter. “Your piss pot, madam,” he said with obsequious solemnity.  
“It’s not the Hope Diamond, Mr. Farnum.” Lydia held the ceramic jug out of reach of her infant daughter and began to climb the stairs. “Let’s go, Addy.”  
Several minutes later there was a knock on her door.  
“It’s me,” said Hickok, stepping into the room. “What a welcoming committee! Charlie shook the ghoul’s hand. Said it was sopping wet and boneless.”  
“He tried to charge me $3 a night, but he had given me his guarantee and I was having nothing of it.”  
“I think your new fearless disposition has some merit.”  
Lydia smiled.  
“Sadly, the only establishment serving food is the dining room in the hotel. Terrible smell out of the kitchen.”  
Lydia grimaced.  
“Charlie and I are sharing the room next door. I’ll have my own room tomorrow.”  
Lydia walked across the room and wrapped her arms around Hickok’s waist. “As uncomfortable a bedstead as it was, I will miss the wagon. Having you on the other side of this wall will seem a world away.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading. Lydia and Addy meet Al Swearengen, the kingpin of Deadwood.

“Oh mama, there’s a fly in my milk.”  
Lydia picked up the glass. It was filthy and the milk was sour. A large fat fly swam between the clots of cream. “You don’t have to drink it.”  
“When will we build our house?” asked Addy as she drew a figure eight with her spoon in a chipped porcelain bowl of gruel.  
“Soon, very soon. Your Uncle Bill and I are going to reconnoiter the plat of land for the house and pay a visit to the claim, but first I want to take our traveling clothes to the laundry in China Alley.” Lydia stood and straightened the bodice of her brown sateen maternity dress.  
“I’m going up to shave and change my shirt.”  
“Can I trust you to sit on the bottom stair and wait for Bill?” asked Lydia.  
Addy shrugged. “I’m going upstairs to get my Homer.”  
Less than a minute later, Addy was perched on the bottom step, chin in hand, gazing out into the street, when a sign caught her eye. Sarsaparilla 5 Cents. She stuck her hand in her pocket and came out with a shiny dime. “If my mama or Uncle Bill is looking for me Richardson, I’ve gone to get a sarsaparilla.” She crossed the street and entered the Gem Saloon.  
“Jesus! What the fuck is she doing in here?” shouted Dan Dority.  
Addy stuck out her hand. “Penny for my cuss jar.”  
“We gotta get her outta here, before the boss comes down for his coffee,” agreed Johnny Burns.  
“Do you have sarsaparilla?”  
“Yes,” answered Johnny, “but you ain’t supposed to be in here.”  
“I am if I want to drink a sarsaparilla.” Addy folded her arms. “Do you have clean glasses? There was a fly swimming in my milk and I am parched.”  
“Just one,” Dan shook his finger at the girl.  
Addy climbed up on the brass foot rail. “Hey is that a slate?”  
“Yess’em.”  
Addy slid her dime across the bar and drained her glass. “That hit the spot!” She wiped her mouth on her sleeve. “Don’t tell my mama I did that. It isn’t ladylike.” She jumped down from the foot rail and walked behind the bar. “Want to see something wonderful.” She began writing Fibonacci’s Sequence before anyone could answer. 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144… Under the numbers she wrote the Formula, Fn = Fn-1 + Fn-2.  
“What in tarnation is that?”  
“It’s Signori Fibonacci’s Sequence. Now watch this.” She drew Fibonacci’s spiral and plotted in the numbers. “It’s mathematics in all of its logical simplicity.”  
“That ain’t arithmetic, it’s got letters,” chuckled Johnny.  
Addy rolled her eyes. “It’s mathematics, not simple arithmetic.”  
“I see,” said Dan, who clearly did not see at all.  
“Don’t look,” whispered Addy.  
“Don’t look at what?”  
“That man in the black suit. Mama says,” she paused to look over her shoulder before she continued. “Mama says that men who go to bawdy houses in the evenings are lonesome, but men who visit first thing in the morning are a bit peculiar.”  
“He’s peculiar alright,” agreed Dority. “In here every morning. So, you know what this place is.”  
“Yes, sir. Mr. Newton, who has been banished and is no longer my father, told mama he would sell me to a bawdy house once we got to Deadwood. Uncle Bill gave him a right thrashing and sent Mr. Newton back to Cheyenne, but not before Mr. Newton hit mama. He was aiming for my sister. Emma’s one.”  
Johnny flinched. “He hit you all the time?”  
Addy sighed. “All the time. Mama’s expecting and he was always talking about kicking her in the belly. He’d done it before.”  
“What the fuck is she doing in here?” bellowed Al Swearengen as he walked down the stairs.  
“Penny for the cuss jar.” Addy stuck out her hand. Swearengen pulled out a silver dollar.  
“For this and future transgressions.”  
“Can I buy another sarsaparilla?”  
Swearengen nodded to Dority. “It’s on the house. You came in one of those shit box wagons early last evening.”  
“I did, sir. We came in from Cheyenne.”  
“What’s your name?”  
“Adeline Williams Hickok, or it will be when the ink is dry on the papers and the filing fee has been paid. You can call me Addy. Is this your establishment?”  
Swearengen raised an eyebrow at the sound of her last name and cast his eyes toward Dan. “It is. Name’s Al Swearengen and this is the Gem Saloon.”  
“I can read.”  
“That would explain the two big books on your back.”  
“The larger of the two is my dictionary ancient Greek and the other is Homer’s Odyssey. I have two tablets and a pencil. I have to translate twenty lines every day, in addition to my other studies. Mama teaches me. I’m a prodigy.” She stared a good long time at Swearengen’s face. “Are you an orphan?”  
Al Swearengen was rarely set back on his heels, but he was now. “Yes, I am.”  
She tipped her head to the side. “But you didn’t have someone to love you as much as I do. Not anyone like my mama.”  
“No I did not.”  
“I’m sorry. You probably had lots of people who treated you like Mr. Newton treated me.”  
“I expect so.”  
“Last year when Emma was born, I thought…well I thought Mr. Newton would love Emma and ignore me. But he didn’t. He hated Emma just as much as me.”  
“I see.”  
“Anyway, my Uncle Bill gave me to the Newtons, because both had university degrees. He thought he was doing the right thing. He guessed right on mama, but he was wrong as wrong can be about Mr. Newton. Anyway, mama teaches me now, but when there is a school in Deadwood, she wants me to go. It’s for socialization, not education. She doesn’t want me to be odd as some prodigies are. Mama holds great store in not being odd.”  
“I can see how that would be a worry to her.”  
“Addy Newton!”  
“Mrs. Newton I presume? Albert Swearengen. We were just getting acquainted over a glass of sarsaparilla.”  
“I was parched. And my name’s not Newton, it’s Hickok.”  
“May I offer you a glass?”  
“The glasses are clean, mama.”  
Lydia smoothed the front of her dress maternity dress, took a deep breath and walked into the Gem. “Pardon my manners, Mr. Swearengen.” She extended her hand. “My name is Lydia Fellowes Newton and I would enjoy a glass of sarsaparilla as I’ve worked up quite a thirst looking for my daughter. It is a coincidence that I find Addy here, as I was meaning to come speak with you. My estranged husband and I bought a claim and a plat from you. I’d like to view both.”  
“May I?” Swearengen gestured to the roll of papers under her arm. “Beautiful baby.”  
Lydia turned over the plats. “Thank you. This is Emma.”  
“So I’ve heard. The land for the house is just on that ridge.” He pointed out the door and up the hill. “I’ll send Dan out with you to see the gold claim.”  
“Thank you.”  
“You’ll be hiring men to work the claim for you?”  
“No, sir. I’ll be working it myself.”  
Al Swearengen tried not to stare at the signs of her pregnancy. He couldn’t believe he was set back on his heels twice in one morning – first daughter then mother. “I see. We have a new hardware concern in the camp, Bullock and Starr. They have a tent on the thoroughfare. Arrived last night after your wagon train entered the camp.”  
“I thank you kindly. Don’t suppose they have maternity-sized wading boots.”  
“I’m sure you’ll figure out something, Mrs. Newton.”  
“Please call me Lydia. One more thing. Next week is Addy’s birthday. I’ve asked Mr. Farnum and the bread baker and both have declined my request to allow me to bake Addy’s birthday cake in their ovens. Are you aware of another oven in the camp?”  
“We have an oven here. I’ll tell Jewel to expect you.”  
“Thank you, Al. Dan, when are you free to escort me to the claim?”  
“Bout an half hour.”  
“Shall we meet you here?”  
“No, I’ll come get you at the hotel.”  
“Pardon me,” said a man in a shabby brown suit and stained bowler hat. He carried a sizable wooden box.  
“Doc, I’d like to introduce you to a future patient. Doc Cochran, Mrs. Lydia Fellowes Newton. Arrived in the camp yesterday. She going to be working a claim in the Hills.”  
Doc looked scandalized. “You’re ready to deliver.”  
“Only looks that way. I’m expecting twins.”  
“Doctor Cochran, I’m Addy Williams Hickok and if it would be alright, I would like to borrow a medical textbook on obstetrics.”  
“Well, I don’t know…” stammered the doctor. “Your mother….”  
“Addy, you know the rule. I need three logical reasons before I give you permission.”  
“I have four reasons, one emotional and three logical,” smiled Addy. “First, I love you and I would feel more confident of your prospects if I understood fully the process of childbirth.”  
“Okay.”  
“My three logical reasons are I am a girl and will be a woman when grown. I think I should know how my body works in order to live a healthy life.”  
“Good.”  
“Second, we will be out on the claim. What if you started to have the babies at the claim site? I would send someone close by to fetch the doctor, but I might need to take some action myself. I would be better equipped to help you if I read this book.”  
“And?”  
“And, I like science as much as mathematics. What if upon reading this book it sparked an interest in medicine? I could be both a world famous mathematician and a doctor.”  
“We are outgunned, Doctor Cochran,” smiled Lydia, “my daughter has permission to read your textbook if you are comfortable. She already understands where babies come from and…”  
“The cabbage patch!” shouted Johnny, before Addy turned and gave him a withering look.  
“Well, then,” the doc swallowed, “on condition of my examining you and discussing with you the merits or demerits of working a claim in your condition, I will allow Addy to borrow my medical book.”  
“Done.”  
With that Lydia took Addy by the hand. “Let’s find your Uncle Bill.”  
“Well,” said Swearengen who walked around the bar, pulled out a bottle of whiskey and took a good long pull. “It appears E.B. was right. Wild Bill Hickok is in the camp.”  
“What’s that mean boss?” asked Dan.  
“Ain’t sure yet, but it ain’t good. See what he says when you take Mrs. Newton to see her claim.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again to everyone who has stopped by to read my fanfic. For those of you who have not heard, David Milch has inked a contract with HBO for a Deadwood movie. YEAH!

“Afternoon, ma’am, Addy,” said Dority from the doorway to the Grand Central Hotel. “I’m ready when you are.”  
“We’re ready now,” said a voice from behind Dority. “Name’s Hickok, James Butler Hickok, but most folks call me Wild Bill.”  
“Pleased to meet you,” returned Dority, extending his hand.  
“At least you don’t have a wet hand like your friend over there.”  
“He ain’t really my friend,” laughed Dority.  
“Skedaddled quick like over to the Gem after meeting me. I figured he must be a friend of yours.”  
“He’s a…he’s a…he’s helpful…to Al. He’s helpful to Al.”  
“I see. By coincidence, I’m helpful to Mrs. Newton and her family.”  
“I see.”  
“It’s lovely to see you again, Dan. Well, now that we have the social niceties out of the way, perhaps you can show us the plat where I will build my house and the location of the claim.” Lydia smiled and handed the maps to Dan.  
“The sooner we get out of this place the better,” whispered Addy.  
“Hush,” said her mother.  
“Well, this is all straight forward. Follow me, it ain’t far.”  
“I’ll take that,” said Bill and Lydia handed him her geology text and a picnic hamper. Then she laced her arm through his. “You always had such a way with an introduction.”  
“The communication in this place is better’n anything provided by Western Union. Man farts on one side of town and they know on t’other long before the smell gets there.”  
“Can’t believe you could smell a fart over the smell of piss pots and horse.”  
“You do have a point, Mrs. Newton. Wrote my letter to the lawyer fella I know in Cheyenne. Charlie Utter’s making a run back to Cheyenne. I’m gonna give it to him to deliver.”  
“Mine’s written. All I need is his name and address.”  
“Sioux probably got’em.”  
“I don’t want to take that chance.” She chuckled. “Addy may be speaking Hungarian for the confused looks Dan Dority is giving her. She’s probably trying to explain Pythagoras' theorem to him. We started Euclidean geometry last night.”  
“Sweet Jesus.”  
“What do you know about Mr. Dority?”  
“He’s Swearengen’s muscle. Good with a gun, but I hear he does his best work with a knife.”  
“Dear God.”  
“Bawdy house has to have muscle, Lydia. Keeps the girls relatively safe and the riffraff in line.”  
“I wonder if his skills are singular to the Gem.”  
“I doubt it, Lydia. But he could be useful. I ain’t here to be the law. Just want to keep you safe under my wing and maybe play some poker. But nothing goes on in this camp without Al Swearengen knowing about it and if Swearengen thinks I’ve been sent here to keep the peace and ruin what he’s built up, Dority might prove useful to me.”  
“Convince Dan Dority and he will relate the information to Swearengen.”  
“Swearengen could have sent anyone to escort us to the claim, but he chose his most loyal man.”  
“Morning Mr. Hickok!” shouted Sol Starr. “Ma’am.” He tipped his bowler hat.  
“My name’s Lydia Fellowes Newton. This is Emma,” she adjusted the sleeping infant in her sling, “and Addy is my eldest.”  
“Pleased to meet you, sir,” Addy curtsied. “My name is Adeline Williams Hickok.” She overenuciated her last name.  
“Mr. Starr and his partner, Mr. Bullock, came in last night from Montana,” explained Hickok.  
“Did I see you this morning at the hotel?” asked Lydia.  
“You did.”  
“And did I hear correctly, you are the proprietor of the camp’s hardware store?”  
“Yes, ma’am. The tent’s temporary. We’ll be building an edifice, shortly.”  
“Do you think you might have a pair of hip waders that will fit over this?” Lydia patted her stomach.  
“We’ll figure something out, Mrs. Newton.” He flushed to the roots of his hair. “Guess I shouldn’t have used the word figure.”  
“No offense taken and please call me Lydia. We’re going to visit the claim now. I’ll pay you a call on my way back. No time like the present. Perhaps, you can figure something out by then.”  
Still red, Sol Starr barked out a laugh. “I’ll do my best.”  
“Seems a pleasant man,” said Lydia to Bill as they recommenced their walk.  
“He is. I like Bullock. Taken to calling him Montana. Better ask if he has an issue with a nickname. Some men do. Bullock was a lawman in Montana.”  
“So a camp with no laws, now has two lawmen.”  
“Hence Al Swearengen’s unease.”  
“Well here it is,” said Dority pointing to an oak stake in the ground. “Plat starts here.” He walked out heel to toe to the stake on the other side. “See it’s thirty feet wide, just like the plat says. There’s a spring here for water.”  
“Don’t stink up here, Lydia,” smiled Hickok.  
“No, the breezes usually blow down from the hills. You’re a bit higher than the rest of the camp,” added Dan.  
“And there’s plenty of room for flowers and a vegetable garden,” smiled Lydia.  
“Her gardens were the talk of Abilene,” explained Hickok. “Window boxes full of flowers.”  
“You don’t say.”  
“This will do. I’m very satisfied. How far is the claim?” asked Lydia.  
“Ain’t far. ‘Bout a half mile away. Easiest if we take the back way. Some rocks on the path, don’t stumble.”  
“I got’em good’en tight,” said Hickok, his arm around Lydia’s waist.  
“I’ll tend to Addy.”  
After a short walk, Dan put Addy down and pointed toward the creek. “We are standing in the middle of your claim. The claim starts in middle of the creek goes up to here and then upwards to the top of the hill. The dimensions of the claim is on the plat and the plat is staked.”  
“How do I get down there?”  
“There’s a thoroughfare,” said Dan before leading them down a treacherous path between two large rocks.  
“It’s flatter down here than I thought,” said Lydia. “Nice place for a picnic. I wonder if Bullock and Star vends tents.”  
Hickok shrugged. “Can’t think they don’t, but I have one. It’s yours.”  
“Can I go swimming?” asked Addy, who was already pulling off her shoes and stockings.  
“Not just yet, but you can get your feet wet.”  
“Well, what do you think?” asked Bill.  
“I think I’d like to eat my lunch and talk about it. I brought you a sandwich, if you’d like to stay, Dan.”  
“I best be getting back.”  
“I’ve been dropping breadcrumbs,” smiled Hickok as he unwrapped a sandwich. “I’ll get’em back in one piece.”  
“Tell Mr. Swearengen, I’m obliged for your assistance.”  
“Yes ma’am.”  
“Before you go, I want to talk a little turkey with you, Dan,” said Hickok. “Like I said at the hotel, I’m here to keep an eye on my dearest friend in the world, my god-daughter, her infant and whomever is baking in her little oven. I’m looking forward to playing a bit of poker and sipping whiskey. I ain’t here to be the law or interfere in whatever interests Al Swearengen, just as long as it doesn’t trample on Mrs. Newton’s toes.”  
“Al will be happy to hear it.” Relief was in Dority’s voice.  
Fifteen minutes later Dority approached the Gem. Swearengen had watched his progress from the Gem’s second floor veranda. “Upstairs.”  
“Yes, boss.”  
When Dority entered the office, Swearengen had already poured him a whisky. “So, is he fucking her?”  
“Oh, he wants to, boss. He dotes on her and the girls. But as big as she is, I can’t imagine the mechanics of how.”  
“Where there’s a fucking will there’s a fucking way.” Swearengen knocked back his shot and poured another, which he immediately downed.  
“Don’t think he has any intention of taking up a badge – he told me all he wants to do is play a little poker and dote on Mrs. Newton and her brood. I heard he had a bit of trouble in Cheyenne they’d send him.”  
“You believe him, about the doting and the poker?”  
Dan downed a shot of whiskey. “Well, they say old habits die hard. But I do. Believe him that is. Word is once he left Abilene, he never took up a badge again. He killed his deputy by accident. Deputy’s name was Williams. Addy’s that man’s daughter.”  
“Sweet fucking Christ, a father to the fatherless and a defender of widows.” Al forewent the shot glass and took a swig right out of the bottle.  
“Anyway, I think he wants to play poker and once she’s delivered poke her.” The smirk on Dan’s face at his little joke died a quick death after a withering look from Al.  
“You best be right.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lydia and Hickok investigate the claim. Digging along the stream's edge, Addy finds their first bit of gold. You are also introduced the Brom Garret, who I've made a prig as well as naïve.

“Good sandwich. You didn’t get this off Farnum,” said Hickok before taking a second bite.  
“No, I got the greens at a stall in Celestial Alley. The bread and the chicken I got on the main street.”  
“Mama!” shouted Emma as she poked her mother’s breast.  
Lydia looked at Hickok. “Is it wrong of me to want her to drink out of a cup? Especially as she can ask for it?” laughed Lydia as she unbuttoned her blouse.  
“Here.” Hickok maneuvered behind her. I’ll hold her and you can finish your sandwich. He reached around and held Emma to Lydia’s breast.  
“What would the world do if they knew you were so sweet?” sighed Lydia before taking a bite of her sandwich.  
Hickok kissed the top of her head. “Why did you never answer any of my letters? Not one.” There was heartbreak in his voice.  
“As God as my witness, Bill, I never received them. The only letters we ever got were your presents for Addy on Christmas and her birthday.”  
“I got your thank yous and they were a balm, but I wrote you ever month.”  
“I tried to write to you, many times. When I heard you were in Buffalo and New York City, I wrote, but the letters came back undeliverable.”  
“That cunt!” he hissed in her ear. “Frank must have tore up all my letters. I tried to make’em as friendly like as I could – asking about the health of friends in Abilene – nothing too specific about you. I never would have married Agnes if I had heard from you regular.”  
Addy, who was turning over rocks with a stick at the water’s edge looked up. “Mama, why are you weeping?”  
“Bill just told me he had been writing to us every month and how sad he was I never wrote him back. But I never got those letters. Frank tore them up.”  
Addy’s face was a thundercloud and her small hands balled up into fists. “I know the Bible says it’s a sin to hate, but I hate Frank Newton. I know it’s wrong, but I can’t help it.”  
“It is a sin we three share,” whispered her mother. “But,” she wiped her eyes, “we won’t dwell on Frank Newton. We are here with those we love best in this world and he will not ruin another day for us.”  
Addy tilted her head and smiled. “I love you mama and I love you Uncle Bill. I do so look forward to the day I can call you daddy.”  
“I’m looking forward to that day as well,” agreed Hickok.  
“I love you, Bill,” said Lydia.  
“I love you, Lydia. And I love you, Addy and Emma, and whoever is poking the back of my hand.” The baby gave him a gummy smile, closed her eyes and started to nurse in earnest.  
Addy flashed a smile. “I found gold.” She stuck out her hand, the tip of her tongue touching her top lip.  
“Holy smokes!”  
“Addy, you must never tell a soul. If anyone asks you if we’ve found any gold, you should say, ‘we’re hopeful’.”  
“Okay mama. Bet I could find more if I could go swimming!” She gave her mother a pleading look, hands together in supplication.  
Lydia sighed. “Come here and I’ll unbutton your dress.” She handed the now sleeping Emma to Hickok before buttoning her blouse.  
“Do I have to wear my bloomers?” asked Addy as she pulled her dress over her head and stepped out of her petticoats.  
“Don’t need to wear’em I my account,” drawled Hickok. “I so rarely wear my bloomers when taking a dip.”  
“You fooling with me Uncle Bill?”  
“I am.”  
“Well, you can’t look until I get in the water.”  
“I promise I’ll be a gentleman.”  
Hickok place Emma gently down onto the blanket then clapped a hand across his eyes. “Go ahead.” When he heard the splash, removed his hand.  
“I’m a good swimmer! Mama taught me.” the little girl shouted as she tread water midstream. “Watch, Uncle Bill!” She turned onto her stomach and swam the crawl from the center of the pool parallel to the shore.  
“She’s a very good swimmer,” Hickok drawled as he watched the backside of his god-daughter bob up and down. “Remind me why I had to cover my eyes?”  
Lydia collapsed in hoots of laughter. “You have only seen the tip of the iceberg, Bill Hickok. She’s a corker.”  
Addy popped back up to the surface. “What did you think?”  
Hickok applauded. “You’re as fine a swimmer as a brook trout! Maybe even better!”  
“Hey, Dan’s back!” shouted Addy before disappearing under the water.  
In one motion Hickok was on his feet. “Dan you missed a good sandwich.”  
“Sorry I did. Don’t know what I ate at the Grand. Made a noise when I stuck in my fork. This here’s Brom Garret and Whitney Elsworth. The Garret claim abuts yours. Whitney’s on the other side.”  
“Bill?” Lydia stuck out her hand. She was having a hard time struggling to her feet. When she stuck her hand out to Brom Garret, she looked at him long and hard. “This isn’t our first meeting, sir.”  
“You do look familiar.” He ran his index finger underneath the length of his waxed moustache.  
Tenderfoot, said Hickok to himself.  
“I believe you may have attended our wedding.”  
“Are you married to Alma Russell?”  
“I am.”  
“Then, you are right. I did attend your wedding. My name is Lydia Fellowes Newton. Your wife and I met on the Grand Tour.”  
“Your family’s from Boston, I believe?”  
“Yes.”  
“You’re married to Franklin! We attended your wedding as well. Franklin and I attended Andover and Harvard both. A fine man.”  
“That’s the opinion of one,” shouted Addy from the water.  
Garret looked uncomfortable. “I guess people can change.”  
“They can and do,” agreed Lydia Newton. “Addy is not prone to lie or exaggeration.”  
“Where is he now?” asked Garret.  
“Cheyenne, I expect. He raised his hand to her and that sleeping babe and I gave him the heave to,” answered Hickok.  
“Good,” said Ellsworth, “never cottoned to a cocksucker, pardon the salty language ma’am, who’d strike a woman.”  
Dan and Brom Garret were silent.  
Dan had backhanded plenty of whores.  
Brom Garret could not contemplate a Harvard man would be capable of such brutality. The woman and the girl both were obviously lying, Brom thought. And Lydia Fellowes Newton and Wild Bill Hickok looked far too cozy. Clearly the tow-haired infant and child were Hickok’s and most likely the babe in her womb. She is a slattern.  
“Well, as soon as Addy has had her fill of swimming,” said Lydia, “I’d like to go back to the hardware store and purchase my provisions. Perhaps, Mr. Ellsworth you can advise me on what I need to purchase.”  
“I also, given your condition and all, would like to show you an easier way to your claim. If Mr. Garret here has no objection, it’s an easier walk along the stream. I’ll show you where the cut through is.”  
“Any objections to my egress, Mr. Garret?”  
“None,” although his face revealed he was none pleased.  
“Addy, it’s time to end your swim.”  
The girl pouted. “Make them turn around!”  
“Bossy little thing, ain’t she?” smiled Hickok.  
Dan laughed. “Walked into the Gem this morning slapped a dime on the counter and ordered a sarsaparilla.”  
Ellsworth chuckled. “You don’t say.”  
Brom Garret smirked. Like mother, like daughter.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lydia visits her claim and meets her neighbors.

“How’s the claim look?” smiled Sol Star.  
“Looks good. Plat for the house, even better,” said Hickok.  
“And I got to take a swim!” grinned Addy, her hair still dripping wet.  
“You don’t say. Well, Mrs. Newton these waders are the widest I got. We can all stand outside while you try’em on,” said Star. “My cot’s toward the back. I don’t mind if you need to sit.”  
Several minutes later, Lydia emerged boots in hand. “These will do,” she smiled.  
“No fashion show?” joked Hickok.  
“Tomorrow morning,” she giggled, “I shall unveil the full ensemble.”  
“Star, don’t know about you, but I’m very afraid.”  
Sol Star shook his head. The tips of his ears were red. “I ain’t saying nothing.”  
“What do you think, Bill? Can I load all of this onto the bottom of my baby buggy?” she asked handing him the pick, the cradle, a shovel and a pan.  
“We’ll give it a shot. Gotta get you my tent from the wagon. I got some rope, what won’t fit on the bottom, we can tie to the carriage. That path Ellsworth showed us was on the flat. Where’s Montana?”  
“Cutting wood for the store. I told him it was precipitous. We haven’t come to an understanding with Al Swearengen,” Star added.  
“What’s Swearengen’s difficulty?”  
“Thinks the three of us are in cahoots. That we don’t want to vend hardware, we want to open a saloon and vend…”  
Hickok looked around for Addy. She was giving the gold cradle a thorough examination. “Pussy,” finished Hickok.  
“Bill’s never run a saloon in his life,” laughed Lydia. “Drank in plenty.”  
“Played cards in more.”  
“And then there was Jessie Hazel.” Lydia smiled, but there was something Hickok saw in her eyes.  
“Bad memories of Abilene,” joked Hickok. “Come on.” When they had walked a few steps, he whispered, “Jessie Hazel had nothing on you. Is she why you didn’t come with me? Did you doubt me?”  
Lydia nodded. “A part of me was jealous and another part wondered if you were truly serious.”  
“Aw, hell Lydia.”  
“It’s all my fault,” she rubbed her eyes.  
“Stop that. We got the rest of our lives ahead of us.” He squeezed her hand.  
“Welcome back the conquering heroes,” yelled Al Swearengen from the second floor porch of the Gem.  
“I’m very satisfied with both the location of the claim and the plat for the house. How much is the other half of the claim, going up the north side of the gulch.”  
“Two thousand dollars.”  
“I want it.”  
“I’m glad to hear it, Mrs. Fellowes. Jewel is ready for you.”  
“Thank you and her. I shall be there presently with spit in my hand.”  
“What’s that about?” asked Hickok after they entered the lobby of the Grand Central Hotel.  
“I am sneaking over to the Gem to bake Addy’s birthday cake,” said Lydia as she watched her elder daughter help Emma up the stairs. “And because Addy found these in the middle of the stream.” She turned her back to Farnum and opened her hand.  
“Shit,” whispered Hickok, his hand closing over hers.  
“One,” said Addy helping her sister climb the stairs.  
“One,” repeated Emma.  
“She’ll have that baby writing Fibonacci’s sequence of numbers before too long.”  
“She will.”  
“What did you think of Ellsworth?” asked Hickok as he guided her up the stairs.  
“His hygiene leaves something to be desired, but he seems a decent man. He’s had some sadness in his life. You can see it in his eyes.”  
“Haven’t met a man on the trail who hasn’t. Dead wife, dead children, often both.”  
“Watch over’em, while I’m at the Gem.”  
“I will. Addy’s gonna turn inside out with her present.”  
“What did you get her?”  
“I ain’t telling. Bought it in New York City.”  
“Fancy! Richardson, I’m going upstairs to fetch something from my room. Would you please ready my things?” A half minute later she returned, her bank draft in her reticule.  
“Here you are, ma’am!” Lydia’s bags of ingredients, her mixing bowl, cake tender and pans sat on the counter. “You’re pretty.”  
“Why thank you Richardson. You’re not so bad yourself. And you’re very kind. How can you stand working for Mr. Farnum?” She whispered the last.  
“Can’t.” He giggled.  
“Your secret is safe with me.” She winked, gathered her possessions and crossed the street to the Gem.  
“You really want to buy the other half of the claim,” asked Swearengen from behind the bar.  
“I want one side of the gulch to the other.”  
“All right,” Swearengen downed a shot of whiskey. “Should be charging you $5,000.”  
Lydia smiled. He thinks this claim has played out, but he’s wrong. She had seen the gleam of gold behind a blanket of poison ivy. “But since we are such dear friends, be it newly acquainted, you shall do me this small favor. And besides, I’m throwing in a slice of cake.” She spit in her hand.  
After he had shaken her hand and held her bank draft up into the light to determine it was genuine, he handed her the deed to the ½ claim and marched her into the kitchen.  
“That’s a pretty cake!” said Jewel after the layer cake had cooled and been iced. “Never seen such a pretty cake.”  
“When’s your birthday, Jewel?” asked Lydia as she walked around the cake and touched up the frosting.  
“Don’t know for sure. I think it’s sometime in September,” responded Jewel as she licked remains of the icing from the spoon.  
“You’ve never had a birthday?”  
“No.”  
“Well, you pick a date in September and I’ll make you a birthday cake and we’ll all sing Happy Birthday.”  
“Yes, ma’am,” the woman smiled. Lydia had no idea how old Jewel was, and in all likelihood, neither did Jewel.  
“Come at 6:30 for a piece of Addy’s cake. After we finish our super we’ll cut the cake thereafter.”  
“Oh my,” oozed Farnum as Lydia crossed the street bearing Addy’s birthday cake in a cake tender.  
“Mr. Swearengen, excuse me I forget myself Mr. Farnum, he asked me to call him, Al. Al was kind enough to lend me not only the use of his oven, but the assistance of Jewel.” Lydia smiled as she watched E.B. Farnum wipe a band of sweat from his forehead with a grimy handkerchief. “I’m giving it to Richardson for safekeeping. Al is coming for a slice of cake. We will eat dinner at six and cut Addy’s birthday cake at six-thirty.”  
Lydia climbed the stairs and knocked on the door to Hickok’s room.  
Charlie answered. “He’s next door minding the young’uns. I’m going soon to Cheyenne, next day or two. Bill done give me a letter to hand deliver. Said you had one as well.”  
“I do, let me get it for you. We’ll be celebrating Addy’s birthday at 6:30.”  
“Bill said something about poker tonight.”  
“He’s earned it. I kept him very busy today.”  
“He needs to make a stake for his new wife.” His voice was filled with rebuke.  
Lydia stopped short. Clearly Bill had not disclosed the contents of the letter he penned to Titus Mannion, Esq. Neither would she. She turned and smiled, “I suppose he does. Let me get you my letter.”  
Lydia entered her own room. Addy, her hair still damp from her swim, was sprawled across Lydia’s bed, her sister snoring softly beside her. Bill roused himself from the twin bed, which served as Addy’s normal place of sleep.  
“Must have dozed off.”  
“Go back to sleep, dearest.” Lydia kissed him gently on the forehead. “You’ll be up late playing poker.”  
Hickok glanced over at the sleeping Addy. “Cake made?”  
“It’s beautiful, if I do say so myself. I’m here to fetch my letter to Attorney Mannion. Charlie asked me for it. He seems a bit miffed we spent so much time together today.”  
“He angered me at breakfast. Keeps trumpeting my intentions and trying to herd me like a steer.” He paused. “I’m working on my letter to Agnes.”  
“Thank you. On the other hand, I hope never to speak again to Franklin Ellsworth Newton. From now on, I expect Titus Mannion to do all my talking.”  
“That’s wise.”  
“I have some mending to do. Why don’t you go back to sleep?” She ran her fingers through his hair and leaned down to give him her customary kiss on the cheek. At the last minute he turned his head and kissed her full on the mouth. Breathing heavy several minutes later, an idle passerby could not help but comment on the difference in their faces – Hickok’s enormous smile and Lydia…well Lydia was just gobsmacked.  
“Haven’t kissed a woman like that in a long time,” laughed Hickok.  
“I’ve never been kissed like that,” said Lydia when she found her voice.  
“I expect he had shortcomings in other areas as well.”  
Lydia flushed to the roots of her hair.  
“That’s why a lot of women don’t like it. Just another reason for me to think Franklin Ellsworth Newton was a feckless shithead. Now I got something nice to dream about,” and he shut his eyes.  
“Me, too,” whispered Lydia as she picked up her basket of mending and took a seat at the window.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Addy turns eight and receives the most perfect present from Hickok. Lydia and Alma Garret reacquaint. Hickock sizes up Brom Garret and doesn't like what he sees.

“Evening, Montana.”  
“Mr. Hickok,” answered Seth Bullock.  
“How come your friend calls me Bill, Montana?”  
Seth Bullock smiled. “Force of habit. My father was a military man.”  
“You call him Mr. Bullock?”  
“Sometimes. Usually right before and right after I got the switch.”  
“Damn, day doesn’t go by I don’t miss my pappy. He was a good man.”  
“You don’t say. Kept running away from mine.”  
“Mine helped runaway slaves.”  
“Underground Railroad?”  
“Yes’em.” Hickok leaned back and whispered, “Mrs. Newton would be obliged if you and Sol stayed for cake. It’s Addy’s birthday.” He slapped the back of his coat. “Tucked her present in here.”  
“Mum’s the word,” joked Star. He touched Seth on the arm. “We each bought her a lolly.”  
“I thank you,” smiled Hickok.  
“You’re most welcome,” added Bullock.  
“And here’s our neighbors,” said Hickok. “You must be Mrs. Garret.”  
She smiled, but her smile didn’t reach her eyes. Alma Garret’s eyes had the glazed look of an opium addict.   
If it weren’t for laudanum, I expect she’d never be able to open her eyes in the morning and look at the face of the supercilious cocksucker she married without losing the meal she ate the night before, thought Hickok. As far as Hickok was concerned Garret and Franklin Elsworth Newton were cut from the same cloth, except that Frank was clean-shaven and didn’t have the irritating habit of running his index finger along the bottom of his mustachio and Brom Garret, he hoped, didn’t beat his wife. Hickok itched to pull his Bowie knife and remove Brom Garret’s index finger at the second joint.  
“I believe you know, my dear friend Mrs. Newton, Mrs. Garret,” began Hickok. “She and your husband had a short conversation, where they sorted out where she met him.”  
“Of course, I remember, Lydia. We were constant companions the summer before we graduated from college. I was at Vassar and she at Mount Holyoke. Our parents took us to Europe. We met quayside in New York. We were quite naughty.”  
“Naughty! I wait with eager anticipation your telling of that story.”  
“Oh, Mr. Hickok!” she slapped his sleeve.  
“She also said she attended your wedding and you hers.”  
Alma Garret’s eyelids fluttered. “I fear two lambs to the slaughter. I hear you are recently married.”   
“Guess that would make it two lambs and a goat.”  
Alma tittered again in a way only wealthy, well brought up young ladies from back East can laugh. Hickok remembered the tickle contest that broke Lydia of it. And while years in Abilene had transformed Lydia into a plain speaker, Alma Garret still spoke in circles with the cadence of a well-to-do Easterner. Deadwood was her first stop west of the Hudson. She spoke as if she were reciting one of Shakespeare’s sonnets – everything in iambic pentameter.  
“I hope you’ll stay for a slice of birthday cake, Mrs. Garret,” murmured Hickok.  
“Surely, it isn’t Lydia’s birthday! I recall her birthday was in the spring.”  
“April,” confirmed Hickok. “No, it’s little Addy’s.”  
“How old is she?”  
“She’s eight. ‘Cept she has the mental capacity of a grown person.”  
“She’s a prodigy then?”  
“Yes, in mathematics, mostly, but in point of fact near on anything she puts her mind to.”  
“How droll!” Brom Garret snickered, “a girl with dreams of mathematics.”  
“And what’s wrong with that dream?” asked Hickok.  
If Garret heard the rebuke in Hickok’s voice he didn’t heed it. “It is ludicrous on its face. Besides, when she gets to a marriageable age, her parents will find something I mean someone suitable.”  
Hickok watched Alma Garret’s spine stiffen. By belittling Addy’s aspirations, he had damned his wife’s accomplishments to her face and in front of others – and he had no idea he had been hurtful, no singular idea. Brom Garret was the most self-absorbed man Hickok had seen since slapping the backside of Franklin Newton’s mare and sending him to Cheyenne or hell. He took Alma Garret’s hand. “Please don’t forget about the cake.”  
“I shan’t, Mr. Hickok.”  
Hickok filled his plate and sat down across the table from his god-daughter. He pulled a parcel of pennies from his pocket, stacked them into a pyramid and slid the first across the table. “I’ve lived rough and I’ve eaten shit in my day, but what passes for food in this establishment is criminal.” Addy smiled and pocketed the penny.   
“I don’t need gold, copper is enough for me. If we stay in this camp much longer,” Addy smiled, “I’m gonna be very rich.”  
The clock chimed six-thirty. “Let me talk to Richardson, perhaps he has something else on the stove,” said Lydia.  
“What is this exactly, Uncle Bill?” asked Addy as she drew lazy figure eights in the slop.  
He slid another penny across the table. “Damned if I know.”  
“Hey, here’s Al and Jewel come for supper!”  
“Happy Birthday!” exclaimed her mother as she came around the corner with Addy’s birthday cake. A rousing chorus of the world’s most difficult song to sing well followed.  
“Oh, mama. It’s a beautiful cake.”  
Hickok reached behind his back and removed her present. He kneeled next to his god-daughter. “When I was in New York, I paid a visit to the dean of mathematics at Columbia College. We had a long discussion about you and your education. It is his hope women will be admitted to the college in the next few years or at least a seminary for women will be established. He’d like to begin a correspondence with you about your interest in mathematics. He has written a book with all the known mathematical theorems.”  
“All of them?” The child’s eyes were as big as saucers. “Even Fibonacci?”  
“I guarantee it. See what he wrote here on the first page,” Hickok opened the book. “He looks forward to publishing a revised edition of his volume with a theorem posited by Adeline Williams.”  
“Adeline Williams Hickok.”  
“He wrote a second volume. A book of famous women mathematicians.”  
Addy opened the book as if looking at Holy Writ. “Maria Gaetana Agnesi. I’ve never heard of her.” And she began to read.  
Lydia pulled her handkerchief from her pocket and wiped her eyes. “Oh Bill, it is the most perfect present.”  
She handed her daughter her gift – a hand-smocked dress embroidered with purple pansies and Lewis Carroll’s Hunting of the Snark.  
For once, Al Swearengen was speechless. The son of a whore, his mother had dumped him in an orphanage before heading west to California. As he put a forkful of cake into his mouth, it tasted like gall. It occurred to him he had never celebrated a birthday – his or any others. So this is what it’s like to have a family that loves you. And his first thought was to destroy this moment. He wanted to push the cake onto the floor and grind it into the filthy pine with his heel, to make some withering remark to Jewel and the little girl, to gut Hickok like a fish, but just as the feelings of anger grabbed him they were pushed away by a silent hand. He ate his cake in peace and pitied Frank Newton for the feckless cocksucker he surely must be.  
For her part, Addy walked to each guest, curtsied, and thanked them for sharing her birthday. Seth Bullock and Sol Starr each produced a rock candy lollypop for the little girl. Jewel was over the moon to be included. Al was still in a state of shock.  
Lydia gathered up the cake plates. “I’ll help you wash, Richardson.”  
“No need.” His beard was dotted with cake crumbs. He’d be reliving Lydia’s birthday for the next week.  
“That was some cake,” muttered Charlie.  
“I’m glad you liked it,” smiled Lydia.  
“I liked it, too!” smiled Jewel.  
“Want me to make it for your birthday?”  
“Yes, ma’am.”  
“Well, you just pick the date,” smiled Lydia.   
“Think I’m going to play some cards,” Hickok said as he handed the last of the cake plates to Richardson. “Coming Charlie?”  
“Feeling lucky, Bill?” smiled Lydia.  
“I do.” He kissed Lydia, Addy and Emma on the cheek.  
As Jewel and Al walked through the mud back to the Gem, Jewel smiled and said, “What a lovely family!”  
“Are they?” asked Al. “How can you fuck a woman, you kiss like your sister?”  
Jewel hit Al on the arm. “He was just being a gentleman.”  
“I guess.”


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay. Sophia Metz is found on the Whitefish Road and Bill teaches Lydia how to shoot. Hickok practiced his shooting each and every day of his life. He always said, "When I pull, I must be sure." My thanks to the documentary program Gunslingers and Walt Willey for the inspiration for this scene.

“We going to the Gem?” asked Charlie.  
“No, I wanna play poker. Heard there was a game at Nuttel’s No. 10.”  
“You shooting tomorrow morning?”  
“Shoot every morning, Charlie. Why should tomorrow be any different?”  
Utter shrugged.  
“Actually, it will be different. Gonna teach Lydia how to shoot a six-gun.”  
“She’s pretty good with a rifle,” agreed Utter.   
“Took her hunting out on the prairie a couple of times when I was marshal. I was going to take Frank, but he didn’t want to get his hands dirty.”  
Charlie chuckled. “He didn’t want to get his hands dirty hunting prairie chicken, but he intended to mine the color?”  
“Don’t make much sense does it?”  
“What don’t make much sense is why she married him in the first place.”  
“She’s a good daughter.” He stopped and looked at Utter. “Can’t imagine what life would be like when the first thing you do every morning is put yourself in a cage.”  
Utter was perplexed. “A cage?”  
“What else would you call those damn corsets?”  
“Got a point there.”  
“Can’t get riled even when you need to, ‘cause you can’t catch your breath.”  
“Never thought of it that way.”  
“Live out everybody else’s dream, yours be damned. Her folks have money, pots of it, but it’s new money. Life for a woman of means ain’t much different now than in was in the Middle Ages.”  
Charlie shook his head. “Best I stay a working man.” I wonder Bill, that part about living out everyone else’s dreams. You talking about Lydia or yourself?  
“Yep.”  
Despite their casual conversation, Charlie knew Bill was on guard. He eyed each man along the thoroughfare. And they him. Talk about not being able to take a breath, thought Charlie.  
Over the years, Charlie noticed most men and women stared openly at Hickok. Despite being a man of action on the frontier, he dressed the dandy – checkered cape, sombrero, fancy buckled boots, shooters butt forward – which when added to his height, broad shoulders, flowing hair and good looks made it all but impossible. Bill had stardust.   
When he was in Abilene and at the height of his powers, John Wesley Hardin was too chicken to take Bill on, but since he killed Mike Williams, he had lost his confidence. Being a gunman and hesitant was a deadly combination. Then, Bill contributed to the problem when made a fool of himself in Cody’s road show. Now, it seemed every scoundrel in the street sized Bill up for the undertaker.   
He remembered what Bill said to him in Cheyenne. When you play the game, Charlie, you live with the notion that someday some ne’re-do-well will do you in. House always wins, Charlie. It’s just up to you to make’em work for it. So many times during the course of their long friendship, Charlie had gotten the word that Wild Bill Hickok had been done in by some Texas scoundrel like Phil Coe. He didn’t like the feel of this camp. No law in Deadwood…no decency either. Charlie wondered how the land came to be known as the Black Hills and he wondered if in addition to gold, some evil was liberated with each blow of a pick axe.  
“Addy, it’s time for your bath,” said Lydia as she laid her sleeping younger daughter down into her cot.  
“Mama, where is Uncle Bill going?”  
Lydia walked to the window. Bill, Charlie Utter, Seth Bullock and several other men were astride horseback. Another man was on the ground handing them torches.  
“Bill,” she shouted from the window, “what’s wrong?”  
“Sioux got a family on the road back to Minnesota.”  
“Oh my God! I remember that family. Be careful.”  
“I’ll come back to ya darlin’. Kiss the little ones for me.” He tipped his hat, kicked his horse and led the search party east.  
Lydia sat by the window for hours until she could keep hers eyes open no longer. She crawled into bed next to Addy and drifted off into a dreamless sleep.  
The fingers of dawn pulled the darkness away from the land. Lydia wiped the sleep from her eyes and set to work dressing herself. It was a new day, a new era. Instead of her normal lace shirtwaist and bustled skirt, she pulled on Frank’s amended trousers and a faded, homespun maternity shirtwaist she wore to clean and do chores. The outfit was completed by the hip boots she had purchased the day before at Bullock and Star.  
“Mama, you look ridiculous.”  
“But I feel wonderful!” smiled Lydia. “No corset for me today!”  
“You’ll cause a scandal,” giggled Addy.  
“I’ll do no such thing. I’ll set a trend.” She picked up Emma. “Let me change your diaper, you stinky girl.” She kissed the baby’s downy forehead. “Get dressed, Addy.”  
“Can I wear trousers?”  
Lydia smiled. “What do you think I’ve been sewing?” She pointed to a small pile of clothes folded neatly on a chair.  
As they descended the stairs of the hotel, the thunder of hooves greeted them.   
“They’re back,” Lydia whispered. He’s safe.  
“Oatmeal’s almost ready,” said Richardson.  
“Thank you. Addy, take your sister. Mr. Richardson will bring you both a bowl of oatmeal.”  
“Yes, mama.”  
Lydia walked out the doorway of the hotel. She was not alone. E.B. Farnum was also watching the posse, which had returned from the Whitefish Road. Al Swearengen, like a vulture, stood on his balcony drinking coffee from a dainty china cup. His major domo, Dan Dority, drank his poison from a tin cup.  
“What’s happened?” asked Lydia.  
“It would seem, Messiers Bullock and Hickok are questioning the veracity of the gentleman on the sorrel mare.”  
“Weren’t Sioux,” repeated Hickok. “Sioux don’t visit the farrier.”  
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. It was Indians!”  
“The men who killed that family were white men. They rode horses with shoes. Came back to town for liquor and pussy. I’ve felt that way after a kill.”  
“You calling me a liar,” and then he made the fatal mistake of going for his gun. Both Hickok and Bullock pulled. The air filled with gunsmoke and the horse threw its dead rider.  
“Who drew first?” asked Farnum.  
“It was very close, but I give the edge to Bill,” answered Lydia as she crossed the street. “Are you alright?”  
“Right as rain,” said Hickok holstering his weapon. “Found the wagon, wolves were already at what was left of the bodies. We buried all but the youngest. The little girl lives. Jane’s taken her to Doc Cochrane’s. She’s an excellent nurse.”  
“She is. So it was road agents trying to make it look like the Sioux?”  
“Seems that way. I was just getting settled to play poker when that hooplehead came into Nuttal’s No. 10 claiming Indians killed a family of Norwegian squareheads on the Whitefish Road. Get out there and there were all kinds of tracks…all shod.”  
“White men.”  
“Are you hungry? Breakfast is ready.”  
“I’ll see to your horse, Mr. Hickok,” said Seth Bullock. “Morning, Mrs. Newton.”  
“Mrs. Newton is my mother-in-law. Call me Lydia.”  
Bullock tipped his hat.  
“I’m obliged Montana.” He turned back to Lydia. “What in tarnation are you wearing?”  
“Don’t you like it?” smiled Lydia. “I ordered it from the House of Worth catalogue.”  
Hickok rubbed her back. “Thought maybe Jane sewed it for you. Mrs. Newton! Where is your corset?”  
“I may burn it,” giggled Lydia.  
“Take a deep breath, darlin’ and tell me what freedom smells like.”  
She squared her shoulders and took a deep breath. “Freedom smells like horseshit.”  
Hickok stuck out his palm. “Penny for the cuss jar, Lydia.”  
They were soon joined at the breakfast table by Charlie Utter. “Jane’s with the doctor. Hope that little one lives.”  
“Was she shot?” asked Lydia.  
“Cuts on her arms. Don’t know if she hit her head none. Found her in an old tree stump.”  
“Maybe her family hid her.”  
“Could be,” Charlie held up his cup for more coffee. “Bill tells me he’s gonna teach you some fancy gun work this morning.”  
“He is.”  
“Given your outfit, maybe Jane can teach you the fine art of bull whacking.”  
“What are we using for targets, Bill?” asked Lydia as she finished the last of her bacon.  
“Apples.”  
They wheeled the baby carriage, now rigged with sifting cradles, a pick axe and other mining supplies and walked toward the claim. When they hit the edge of the camp, Bill stopped and said, “This will do.” He pulled twelve apples from a burlap sack and set them at various levels on a wooden gate. A crowd gathered.  
“Now, we’ll see some shootin’!” said someone in the crowd.  
“He can’t hit the side of a barn no more,” chided another.  
If Bill heard them, he didn’t let on. He seemed to fire without aiming – twelve shots, twelve ruined apples.  
“Now, you try Lydia. Gun’s part of your arm.”  
Lydia took a deep breath and squared herself to the fence, her new six shooters already in her hand. She studied the apples, raised both guns and emptied the gun in her right, then the one in her lap. Twelve shots, eight ruined apples. “Darn it!”  
“That was pretty good for your first attempt. We’re twenty-five feet from those apples.”  
“What do you think, Addy?” asked Lydia as she reloaded her weapons.  
Addy, like Emma, still had her hands over her ears. “Those poor apples!”


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the month's long delay. Will have the next chapter up shortly. Today, we meet the miscreant known as Jack McCall. Lydia finds gold and casts in her lot with Al.

Standing on his balcony, Swearengen raised his blue and white tea cup to his lips and blew on the coffee. He looked up and down the main thoroughfare as if were his kingdom. It was. “I heard she was a good shot,” he said to Dan before taking a sip.  
“She ain’t no Wild Bill and it was only her first time, but she made it look almost as effortless. When he shoots, don’t even look like he’s taking aim – just fluid motion like one of ‘em fancy ballerinas. Taught her to do the same. She took out 8 of the dozen. I’d seen her before with a rifle and she’s keen with that.”  
“An apple ain’t a man, Al,” said E.B. Farnum.  
“But it’s the size of his heart,” returned Swearengen, who had never learned to shoot, preferring to work closer in with a Bowie knife.  
“True.”  
“Where are they now?”  
“Back out at her claim, I expect,” said Dan. He realized his mistake nearly before he finished speaking it. Al Swearengen wanted facts, not supposition in his morning briefings.  
“Where’s the foundling?”  
“Doc Cochran’s.”  
“She alive?”  
“Yep, but she ain’t awake. If she’s the little’un I remember, she may only speak squarehead.”  
Al looked across the street to the windows of the hotel. The popinjay, Brom Garret was visible through the parted curtains.   
“A fucking cravat?” asked Dan, his eyes following Al’s. “Does he think we’re going to a fucking tea party?”  
Al had turned his attention to Alma Garret. He watched her eyes flicker to the left, take in her husband’s back and in a move both well-practiced and quick as lightening, she squirted a glass tube of laudanum into a glass of water and drank it – all before he tied his shoes. “You see Ellsworth and Mrs. Newton making any progress on their claims?”  
“Ellsworth seems a man of his word – got a working claim enough to keep him in grub, liquor and pussy.”  
“Unfortunately, not soap,” snorted E.B. Farnum before dusting a small snowdrift of dandruff off his shoulder.  
“And Mrs. Newton.”  
“That woman’s a ball of fire despite being the size of Wu’s icehouse – jumping in an out of the stream, turning over four or five shovelfuls for every one Garret has the energy for. She’s laughing and singing and helping Addy recite her theorems.”  
“Hickok help her?”  
“Some, so does Addy, but she don’t look like she needs much help. Girl swims like a fish, swims as good as she cyphers or knocks back a sarsaparilla. I think she’s pulled a few good-sized nuggets from the creek bed. He’s reconnoitered the claim with Mrs. Newton, watches the baby and since he’s usually up all night playing cards, takes the occasion nap.” Dan took a sip of his coffee.  
“Anytime I ask her if she’s found something,” added Johnny Burns, “she answers ‘I’m hopeful, Mr. Burns’. I think she’s more’n hopeful.”  
“Bullock or the Jew make an appearance?” asked Swearengen pouring a second cup of strong coffee.  
“Never.”  
“I ain’t sure he ain’t just what he says he is, Al,” said Farnum. “Seems content to play cards at the No. 10 and keep company with Lydia.”  
“Lydia?” smiled Swearengen.  
“Mrs. Newton is her mother-in-law, she informed me. She asked me call her by her Christian name and as I am a gentleman, I complied.”  
“She call you E.B. or Eustace?”  
“E.B.” Farnum straightened his frock coat. “We were both born in Massachusetts.”  
“Were you now,” smiled Swearengen, turning toward Farnum. “Practically neighbors, I expect.” He always looked more viper than man with a smile on his face. “Dan, your man awaits.” Garret had exited the hotel and stood on the thoroughfare running his index finger under his well-tended mustachio. How Swearengen knew Garret had vacated the hotel when his face was turned in the opposite direction was a mystery to his subordinates.  
“I’ll try not to have too much fun,” groused Dan.  
“Check in on Mrs. Newton,” said Al. “I thought that claim had played out. But if the girl’s finding nuggets then gravity is bringing them down from somewhere.”  
“Yes, Al.”  
*****  
Hickok pulled his daddy’s Waltham repeater gold pocket watch from his vest. “Got to be going Lydia.”  
“Playing again at the No. 10?”  
“I expect. I had words again this morning with Charlie. He’s still trying to get me to shill for the house.”  
“That’s not you. You just want to play.”  
“I do, and I’m a day late and a dollar short,” smiled Hickok, who had spent the previous evening not playing poker as he had planned, but rescuing a small girl from road agents.  
“Dan and Brom Garret have arrived…finally. I can see Ellsworth. I’ll be fine.” She waded out of the water and raised her face for his kiss.  
“Won’t be all night,” he smiled, put his fingers under her chin, and kissed her goodbye. “If I ain’t too late, I’ll check in on ya.”  
“Best of luck, my dearest,” said Lydia.  
“You two best behave, listen your mama,” Hickok smiled at Addy and Emma.  
“Good luck!” sang Addy. “I love you!”  
“I love you, Addy. Love you with all my heart.” He scratched the top of the little girl’s head and affixed his black sombrero on his head.  
Emma also gave him her best wishes in a language known only to the Good Lord.  
“Afternoon, Mr. Hickok,” said Brom Garret. Even half-bent with a shovel, he looked like a popinjay posing for the Montgomery Ward catalogue.  
“Afternoon Garret, Dority. Having any luck?”  
The scion of the New York Garret’s stretched and rubbed the small of his back as if he had been working all day. “Not as yet.”  
“Ain’t an occupation for the faint of heart, is it? Don’t know where Lydia gets the strength. She finds the icy waters refreshing as carrying two young’uns makes a woman overheated.”  
“Does it really?” asked Brom Garret, who wasn’t sure he appreciated learning of Mrs. Newton’s predilections.  
“Had a sister who complained the same,” nodded Dan. “She had twelve.”  
“All live?” asked Hickok.  
“Yes’em, best I know.”  
“She was blessed. My mama had eight. One died a baby. She still talks of that little boy to this day.”  
“I was blessed with one sister and a brother,” added Brom Garret.  
“And well loved, to be sure,” finished Hickok, though for the life of him, he couldn’t think why.  
“Going off to Tom Nuttal’s?” asked Dority.  
“Yes. I have been paroled. Poker game calling my name. I’d be obliged Dan, if you’d look in on Lydia and the girls. She’s got the strength of ten men, but she’s getting so far along…” Lydia splashed back into the creek. Hickok didn’t finish his sentence.  
“She’s getting to be as big as Wu’s icehouse,” muttered Dority.   
Hickok shot him a look.  
“Meant no disrespect,” said Dority, hands in the air. “She’s as pretty as a picture, but…”  
“Just more to love,” smiled Hickok.  
When he was out of earshot, Garret muttered, “Slattern.”  
“You going to get back to work?” asked Dority, his voice full of exasperation. Lydia Fellowes Newton was a lady born and bred, but she was no snob…and no slut.  
“I do believe I’m finished for the day,” said Garret mopping his brow. He’d only shoveled a dozen half-spadesful of grit into the sifting box. “My back is in torment.”  
By Dority’s count, Lydia exhibited twice the upper body strength of the New York macaroni. From a distance, he had watched her shovel full spadesful of grit and four times as many as Brom Garret in the same period of time and she didn’t look the least bit winded. Amazing as she had been at it for hours. “I’m gonna tell Mrs. Newton we’re leaving, case she wants an escort back to the hotel. Should she demur, I’ll have a talk with Ellsworth.”  
Brom Garret sniffed and pursed his lips like a disapproving grande dame. All he needed to complete the look was a folding lorgnette. He would speak to his wife about her continued interest in renewing a relationship with this woman. Lydia Newton was clearly an adulteress. Besides, Lydia Newton’s, née Fellowes’s, family had little in the way of pedigree. They worked in manufacturing! And her father had the misguided attitude that helping the working man would profit his business. Clearly hobnobbing with his betters had not laid waste to such importune thoughts.  
“Mrs. Newton?” yelled Dan Dority as he waded through the creek.   
“I will not answer you, Dan, until you call me Lydia.” She smiled broadly as she dumped another shovel of grit into the shifting box.”  
“Mr. Garret’s back is feeling poorly, Lydia.” He pointed to the macaroni, who was massaging his back and had a pained expression on his face. “We’re heading back. Do you wish to walk with us?”  
Lydia brushed her forearm across her forehead. “I’ve got several hours of good day light. Mr. Elsworth has proven to be amenable to escorting us back to the hotel.”  
“Well, I’ll let him know we’re going back and to look out for you.”  
“How’s Mr. Garret’s luck holding out? Has he found any color?”  
“I can’t say with any certainty Mr. Garret would know the color of his eyes staring straight into a looking glass.”  
Lydia chuckled. “I dare say you are right.”  
“How them babies doin’?”  
“Just fine. Thank you for asking. I think I’m having boys. They commenced a boxing match first thing this morning.”  
“Two and two. I was watching you fer a piece. Best I counted you out-shoveled him four to one, and,” he looked over his shoulder back at Garret, “and without the bellyaching.”  
“Which given the size of my belly is something of a miracle,” chuckled Lydia.  
Dan’s face turned purple. “I wasn’t gonna say it that way, but I guess you’re right. I’ll let Ellsworth know to keep an eye out for you.”  
An hour later, Hickok was back at Nuttal’s #10. The saloon was packed to the rafters with prospectors and the men who mined the miners. Hickok gave his fellow patrons the once over. There had been three separate sets of hoof prints in the dirt around what was left of the Norwegians wagon. One was dead, which meant the other two miscreants were in all likelihood in Deadwood waiting to see if the little girl woke up – and if Hickok was correct, at least one of them was giving him the stink eye from a table between his poker game and the door. I’d feel better, if I had another gun. But Charlie and Jane were with the young’un.   
Ten years ago, Bill would not have given a moment’s thought to taking on two men drawing down on him, hell he took on ten in the McCandless Affair alone, but his declining eyesight had taken a toll on his confidence. And then, as the Good Lord had always provided for him, Seth Bullock walked through the door. “Getting myself a whiskey,” Hickok said to the dealer and moseyed over to the bar. “Evening, Montana.”  
“Hickok. Where’s Charlie?”  
“Pissing in the alley. Said he would check in on Jane and the foundling.”  
“Saw Ellsworth walk Lydia and her daughters back to the hotel. Addy has challenged Brother Smith to a Lincoln-Douglas style debate on the proposition God was a mathematician based on the .”  
“You don’t say,” chuckled Hickok. “That girl’s a hoot. I love her so.” He knocked back a whiskey.  
“Any luck tonight?”  
“At the table’s, middling. My prospects with the cards don’t bother me none, but I believe the men at the far table mean to do me harm.”   
“Think they were a party to last night’s festivities?” asked Bullock before knocking back his own shot of whiskey. He looked into the mirror behind the bar and eyed the inebriate at the far table. There was something familiar about the man, but the only thing Bullock new for sure was that he was drunk and giving Hickok the snake-eye.  
“The far one has a passing resemblance to the hooplehead, who took us out to the bodies of the family on Spearfish Road last night.”  
“The one you killed this morning?” added Bullock conceding the morning’s kill to Hickok. “He does.”  
Hickok turned to the proprietor and asked for another $50 in chips.  
“Can you cover it?” Tom Nuttal asked Hickok. It was Nuttal’s turn for the snake-eye.   
The raucous voices of men; nor their belching, swearing and farting; nor the clink of glasses or the popping of corks; nor the sound of cards being shuffled or dealt across the cheap wood tables could mask the scratch of chair legs against the raw wooden floor. Hickok’s eyes may be failing him, but he still possessed the keen hearing of a bat. “Here he comes, Montana.” He scooped up his chips and headed back to his seat.  
“I see him.”  
Hickok was ready for the road agent. He cared not the robber’s hand was still inches from his iron. He knew how the game was truly played – kill or be killed. He pulled and shot the man dead.  
Nuttal’s was in an uproar.   
“He didn’t have his gun out!” shouted the man, who had shared the table with the dead highwayman, as well as the dealer, Con Stapleton.  
“He meant me harm,” answered Hickok, returning his iron – butt out – to the sash that served as his holster.  
“He was drawing down on Wild Bill,” agreed Bullock.  
Hickok pulled his chips from the table and returned them to Tom Nuttal. “I’ll be back tomorrow. See you, Montana, and thanks.”  
*****  
Hickok was not keeping to his schedule – days at the claim with Lydia and nights at the poker table – it was the afternoon but he was sitting at his usual table at Tom Nuttal’s No. 10, sitting across from a man who made his skin crawl. After years of fame, it still grated him that complete strangers felt they were his friends or worse, the men to give him advice. Crooked Nose Jack McCall was one such man. He was filthy and despite years on the buffalo trail, Hickok could not countenance a man who stank as bad and talked a much as McCall. His hanging right eyelid was a source of irritation. And every time McCall opened his mouth and muttered something stupid – which was often – the eyelid would flutter.  
Despite a feeling upon awakening he would win the day, Hickok was losing and losing badly. And McCall kept flapping his gums, his drooping eyelid along for the ride.  
Hickok was a famous man – famous for his gun, his toughness, his flamboyant dress. Those who knew him well found him a man of great warmth, kindness and impeccable manners. He loved children and never missed an opportunity to toss a little boy a ball or tickle a little girl under her chin. He rarely used profanity, but McCall had pushed him to his limit.  
“That dropped eye looks like the hood of a cunt to me, Jack. When you talk, your mouth looks like a cunt moving,” said Hickok to the man across the table who had goaded him all afternoon.  
The men on either side tensed. McCall’s blather would have tried the patience of the Lord himself that afternoon. A man with lesser self-control than the great Wild Bill Hickok would have put Jack McCall out of their collective misery forty-five minutes ago.  
McCall straightened in his chair. “I ain’t gonna get in no gunfight with you, Hickok.”  
“But you will run your cunt mouth at me,” sighed Hickok. “And I will take it to play poker.”  
Con Stapleton, who had been pushed his shoulders above his jaw so that they looked like earrings, exhaled loudly. “Let’s play some poker.”  
McCall tossed a handful of chips onto the table. “I’d like to raise you, Hickok, but I don’t think you’ve enough to cover.” He looked back at Tom Nuttal, “I think Wild Bill needs a few more chips, Tom.”  
“He ain’t asked me for’em,” answered Nuttal.   
Hickok pulled one of his Army Colts from his sash. The population of the bar collectively flinched. “I think this should cover it.”  
“How much for the whole pair?” joked McCall. He put his cards down on the table. He didn’t have a great hand, but his three-of-a-kind was better’n the pair of fours in Hickok’s.  
“You two have a problem, you can take it outside.”  
Hickok shrugged, stood up and grabbed his sombrero off the peg. “I’ll be back later to settle up Tom. See to my pistols.”  
“Yes, sir.”  
Hickok exited Nuttal’s just as Lydia and her girls were walking down the street. She was about to ask Hickok how he did when she saw the look on his face and more worrying, the absence of his Army Colts from the sash that served as a holster. “Your luck will change,” said Lydia.  
Hickok stuck out his arm. “It just did.”  
As they walked down the thoroughfare, Lydia slid a nugget into Hickok’s pocket.   
“I can’t take that,” whispered Hickok.  
“I’m staking you. Found a lot more where that came from.”  
“Really?”  
“Right after Dan and Brom Garret left.”  
Hickok whistled through his teeth. “Thank the good Lord!”  
“I’m gonna need a surveyor. Someone I can trust.”  
“I know a man in Cheyenne, but I think I would defer to Bullock. I hear he has connections.”  
“Can we speak to him after dinner? I could eat a horse.”  
“Sadly at the Grand Central, you may get your wish.”  
“Afternoon, Mr. Bullock. You’ve made quite a bit of progress since this morning.”  
“He’s nearly as industrious as you, Lydia,” smiled Hickok.  
“How’d you do at Nuttal’s?”  
“Terrible,” smiled Hickok. “McCall was at the table.”  
Bullock turned up his nose like he had smelt spoiled milk. “Can’t stand him.”  
“Me neither, but I will put up with him to play poker.”  
They both turned at the sound of gunfire, but it was no gunfight. The Bella Union was open for business.  
“New saloon, better luck,” smiled Lydia. “Looks fancy.”  
“I wonder if they have poker?”  
Bullock shrugged. “Don’t know for sure. Watched’em carry in a table for craps.”  
“Don’t throw the bones,” said Hickok. He patted Lydia’s arm. “Gonna get my ladies fed. If you’ll have me, I’ll come back and bang in a few boards.”  
“Be much obliged.”  
Before Hickok and Lydia crossed the threshold into the Grand Central Hotel, A. W. Merrick, publisher, photographer and sole reporter of the Deadwood Pioneer, called out to them. “Might I take a picture, Mr. Hickok?” Merrick had tried to interview and photograph Hickok the night before.  
“Take a picture with Addy!” Lydia urged. “We’ll get an extra copy and send it to your mother.”  
“All of us or none of us,” answered Hickok.  
“But my hair!” laughed Lydia.  
“You look lovely, Mrs. Newton,” smiled the publisher.  
Hickok picked up a sleeping Emma from the carriage and handed the infant to her mother. He tucked an errant strand of hair behind her ear and dusted dirt off her cheek with his handkerchief. “Right as rain, Lydia.”  
“Well, all right.”  
Merrick scurried about like a squirrel. “I’ve ordered a newer camera. On three.”  
The noise from the flash powder woke Emma. She scowled rather than screamed.  
“Oh, if she’d only stay that way for a moment. What a funny picture?” With that the baby smiled.  
“I would like several copies, Mr. Merrick. At least three.”  
“Might I publish it in the Pioneer?”  
“Only if I can write the caption,” agreed Lydia.  
“Agreed. An interview, perhaps?”  
“Perhaps,” Lydia smiled. She had no interest in sitting for an interview with A.W. Merrick, but she was wise enough to know making an enemy of the press was not in her best interests.  
Hickok, always the gentleman, stood aside and allowed Lydia to enter the dining room.   
“I’m so hungry, I don’t have the strength to change my clothes,” sighed Lydia. “I worked very hard this afternoon.”  
“You don’t look much worse than our fellow diners. Go save us a table. Addy and I will get in line.”  
“Good evening, Lydia.” Farnum smiled equal parts Uriah Heep and a Shakespearean fool. “Did you have a productive day?”  
“I did.”  
Farnum took a step back with a startled look on his face. It was if she had announced she had contracted syphilis.  
“Truly?”  
“Truly. Might I have a cup of coffee, E.B.?”  
“Certainly, Lydia.” He pivoted. “Richardson!”  
Farnum’s familiar, coffee pot in hand, scurried across the dining room like a demented skunk. He smelled like he’d slept with one as well.  
“Richardson will see to your needs,” smiled Farnum. “I must run an errand.”  
“Where’s he going?” asked Hickok as he put down a plate of shepherd’s pie in front of Lydia. “Don’t smell half bad, today.”  
“E.B. is going where I want him to go. He’s off to tell Al Swearengen I found gold,” she whispered.  
“Is that wise?”  
“Better’n my gold in Al’s safe than in Farnum’s pocket. He’s been searching the room daily, even the diaper pail.  
“Funny, he doesn’t strike me as diligent,” joked Hickok. “I use that nugget in the Bella Union, news of your strike will be all over Deadwood.”  
“It will be tomorrow anyway. I don’t think I can wait for a surveyor from Cheyenne or Billings. I’m gonna ask Ellsworth to survey my claim tomorrow morning.”  
“What did you find?”  
“A vein about a foot thick.”  
“Sweet Jesus, Lydia!”  
“I scampered up the rock face. Traced it through the sand by the creek and up to where the ivy covers the rocks. More than enough to pay for a million divorces, I figure.”  
Hickok took off his sombrero, put it on the baby’s head to the amusement of the rest of the dining room and bent his head over his stew.  
An hour later, Hickok and Lydia were walking the thoroughfare. She had washed changed into a skirt and clean shirtwaist. “Still at it, I see,” smiled Hickok.   
Bullock had removed his starched collar and linen shirt. His suspenders were pulled up over his thin shoulders. He was a handsome man, but not as breathtaking as Hickok.  
“Can we give you a hand?” asked Lydia, picking up a spirt level. “I can’t wait to start on my house.” She held the level against the beam before striking the wood with her hammer. She checked it again, “It’s square, now.”  
“Builders start next week, I reckon,” smiled Bullock, “or you gonna build it yourself.”  
Lydia smiled. “I’m tempted. It will be a handsome house. Four bedrooms, a library and a big kitchen. I’ll have you all to supper.” She pulled a series of papers from her pocket. “I’m going to order this through Charlie. It’s a hidden door for the wall connecting the library to the dining room.”  
Starr looked over his shoulder at Lydia and smiled. “You got lots of books, Lydia?”  
“More books than furniture!” she laughed. “Don’t I, Bill?”  
“She surely does, boxes and boxes of them. Charlie says it’ll take four trips from Cheyenne.”  
“You don’t say!” said Bullock.  
“Maybe we can discuss a lending library for the camp.”  
“I heard Mr. Merrick discussing the very same subject at breakfast yesterday,” returned Lydia.  
“He has a keen interest.”  
“Perhaps if Alma Garret should decide to stay permanently in the camp, she too would participate.”  
“Are the Garrets leaving the camp?” asked Bullock.  
“Brom Garret seems ill-suited to prospecting.”  
“Garret seems ill-suited to work of any kind,” chuckled Hickok.  
“Will you buy his claim?” asked Bullock.  
“Not without surveying it first, but it is not beyond the realm of possibility.”  
“Have you found gold?” whispered Bullock.  
“I have and there is more still to be had. Bill knows of a surveyor in Cheyenne and mentioned you know a man in Billings.”  
“I do.”  
“I don’t believe I have time for either man. I’m thinking of asking Ellsworth to survey my claim.”  
“He’s a good man. Worked on the Comstock, I hear.”  
“So the rumors are true?”   
“I believe so, Lydia.”  
“Then the matter’s settled.”  
“What about the rest?” asked Hickok.  
“The rest?” repeated Starr.  
“I’m going to employ Al Swearengen to keep my gold, for the time being, in his safe,” said Lydia as she banged in a cut nail.  
“Is that wise?” asked Bullock.  
“Perhaps not, but his is the biggest safe in town. I will have it measured twice and a receipt of course.”  
“There ain’t no other place to put it until you have sufficient to bring to Denver,” added Starr.  
“And I tie Al Swearengen’s hands.” Lydia smiled.  
Bullock smiled in return and the quartet turned their attention away from gold to plumb lines, cut nails and oak beams.  
“I know you!” shouted a drunken hooplehead. He held the neck of a bottle of cheap whiskey in his right hand and staggered if shipboard on a rough sea. “You’re Wild Bill Hickok. I saw you in Hartford.”  
“You don’t say,” said Hickok.  
At first the drunkard was fawning, and Hickok thanked him for his compliments. But as Lydia witnessed in Cheyenne, the sycophant soon turned dark. Sometimes Bill had that effect on people – people incapable of greatness just seethed at his. When the man’s taunts turned toward Lydia, Hickok was on his feet. Bullock and Starr beside him.  
“It’s best you go.”  
“I don’t know who you think you are or who you think she is. I hope you get what’s coming to you. I hope you get it here in Deadwood.”  
The man staggered off sucking away all the comradery of the past hour along with him.  
Hickok stood, returned his sombrero to his head and said, “I’m gonna play some poker.”  
“You gonna try the Bella Union?” asked Lydia.  
Hickok nodded.  
She raised her cheek. “Best of luck.”  
He smiled and kissed her. “And the same to you. Bella Union’s just across the thoroughfare from Swearengen’s place. You need me, you know where I’ll be.”  
“I’ll be all right.”  
“Montana, Starr.”  
Lydia watched him walk away. She turned and looked at Bullock. “It happens everywhere. Men who will never be more than a hill of beans can’t leave him alone.”  
“I’m sorry, Lydia,” whispered Bullock.  
Lydia wiped her dusty hands on her homespun. “Best I settle my affairs with Al Swearengen and see to my girls. I’m sure Charlie Utter is dopey with mathematical formulas by now.”  
Starr laughed. “I wouldn’t mind taking a look at that book.”  
“I’ll mention your interest to Addy. She’s never at a loss to speak at length about the great Fibonacci.”  
Lydia walked down the main road, stepping over drunks and pools of urine. “What would mama and daddy think of all of this?” she whispered before crossing the threshold of the Gem. The piano was playing a lively tune, filthy miners whose urine, shit and mud encrusted clothes were feeling up the breasts of bored looking whores in the titty corner. She turned her head and half-covered her eyes with her hand when she realized one man was getting a hand job as he sang the chorus of ‘Camptown Races’. “Dan, is Al in?”  
“Jesus!” Dority grabbed a dishtowel, draped it over her head and dragged her upstairs to Swearengen’s sanctum sanctorum. “Al, Lydia’s here to see you!” he shouted through the closed door.  
Al opened the door to his office. “Come in.” A well-dressed man sat in a chair across the desk from Swearengen’s. “Lydia Newton, I’d like to introduce you to Magistrate Claggett from Yankton.”  
“How do you do?” she extended her hand.  
If had expected the two-fingered half grip of a society woman, he was sadly disappointed.  
“Mrs. Newton.” He massaged his hand.  
“I learned to shake hands properly in Abilene. I hope you didn’t break a bone.”  
“No ma’am.”  
“Hickok teach you to shake hands?” smiled Swearengen.  
“Who else?”  
“Is that Wild Bill Hickok?”  
“Yes, he’s next door at the Bella Union, playing poker.”  
“He doesn’t come here,” pouted Swearengen.  
“You don’t have a poker table, Al!” smiled Lydia.  
The sound of a headboard slamming into the wall adjoining the office and the faux moans of ecstasy filled Al’s residence. All three pretended they did not hear a thing. “How may I help you, Lydia?”  
“It is a private matter. Perhaps, I can return in an hour.”  
“No need, Mrs. Newton. Mr. Swearengen and I have concluded our business. He took her hand and raised it to his lips. The skin between his nose and upper lip was oily.  
“Perhaps we can speak tomorrow at breakfast. I have attempted to ensure the change of my daughter Addy’s surname. She was born to Mr. Hickok’s deputy, Mike Williams. My estranged husband baulked at our adoption of Addy and both Addy and Frank chafed at her use of his name. As he has deserted his family and because of her great affection for her godfather and guardian, Addy wishes to replace Newton with the surname of Hickok…with her godfather’s best wishes and my own.”  
“The fee is $10. I shall have the paperwork to you in the morning.”  
Lydia knew the fee was $2, but Addy’s happiness was worth more far more than $8. “Do you require payment in advance?”  
“No ma’am. I expect Addy’s Christian name is Adelaide?”  
“You are correct, sir. Adelaide Williams Newton to become Adelaide Williams Hickok.” She spelled Hickok.  
“The papers will be presented in full at breakfast.”  
“I thank you, magistrate.”  
Like a bad actor in an even worse pantomime, Claggett threw his cloak over his shoulders and exited stage right.  
“He overcharged you,” smiled Al.  
“Addy’s peace of mind is worth $8.”  
“No doubt. What can I do for you?”  
“First,” she pointed to the door Claggett exited, “ignore everything that emanates from his mouth.”  
Swearengen smiled. “Done.”  
“Secondly,” she sat down on the wooden chair vacated by Claggett. It was uncomfortably warm. “I am in need of your safe.”  
“You wish me to house the document changing Addy’s name from Newton to Hickok?”  
“Yes, and more. I’ve a successful claim.”  
Swearengen leaned across his desk. “Have you?”  
“I take it you thought it was played out?”  
“I did.”  
She pulled a rock the size of a baseball from her pocket. Mostly quartz, three clear lines of gold cut through the white stone. “It wasn’t.”  
“I see. How may I help you, Lydia?”  
“I want the use of your safe. The gold will be weighed and measured twice for accuracy. I will pay you a rental fee for the safe as well as for your services to weigh the gold.”  
“And if I refuse?”  
“The rock will go to Denver.” With that, her abdomen heaved like a Pompeiian earthquake before the eruption of Vesuvius.  
Swearengen pulled a bottle of whiskey and two mostly clean shot glasses from a bottom drawer. “This should calm them down,” he chuckled.  
Lydia threw back a shot of whiskey.   
“I wish I had two of you,” smiled Swearengen.   
“There’d be no room for anyone else in this office if you did!” laughed Lydia.  
“I dare say not. When do you want to weigh the gold?”  
“Tomorrow morning.”  
Swearengen poured her a second shot of whiskey. “Who has the second scale?”  
“Mr. Starr.”  
“The Jew. How fitting.”  
“I am not fond of anti-Semitism or bigotry of any kind,” said Lydia before downing the second shot of whiskey.  
“Duly noted. What will you be doing with your newly found riches?”  
“Building a house and accumulating Addy’s university tuition.”  
“And Mr. Newton?”  
“The money placed in trust for me by my father, paid for the stake on this claim. He hasn’t paid for it; he hasn’t worked it. Should the coward known as Franklin Ellsworth Newton reappear he has no legal right to this claim. Should he raise his hand to me or his children born or,” she cradled her distended abdomen, “unborn, I will shoot him dead.”  
“I see.”  
“No law in Deadwood,” she smiled. She draped the dishtowel over her head like a mantilla. “Until tomorrow, Al. Perhaps Dan can lead me downstairs?”  
As Lydia made her way down the stairs under the watchful eye of Dan Dority, she noticed Brom Garret at the bar. Whether he saw her or not was not her concern. She removed the cloth at the threshold of the Gem, handed it to Dan and walked across the street to the Grand Central.  
*****  
After the last hand, only two gamblers were left – Wild Bill Hickok and Jack McCall. Though he had on a new suit of clothes – and a price tag was testament to its recent purchase – McCall still smelled of pig shit.   
Unlike in days past, luck was smiling on Wild Bill. His Colts were butts out in his sash, a pile of bank notes, silver and gold dollars and chips were piled on his end of the table keeping company with a bottle of fine Kentucky bourbon. Lydia was right – new place, new luck.  
McCall started to squirm, then he started to abuse the dealer, a beauty of whore named Joanie Stubbs.   
Like greased lightning, the owner of the Bella Union flew across the room and grabbed McCall by the scruff of the neck. “I warned you about that kind of talk.”  
McCall raised his hands in surrender. When Hickok called the last hand, McCall turned over his cards. Nothing he had nothing.  
“I appreciate the game, Jack,” said Hickok. He tossed a chip at the man. “I know how this feels. Go buy yourself something to eat.” He left a healthy tip for Joanie Stubbs, collected his winnings and walked out of the Bella Union. He could hear the sound of Bullock driving nails into the framing of his new hardware store.  
“Evening Montana.” Hickok climbed the stairs to the second floor of the store. “You’ve made progress.”   
Bullock had peeled off his union suit. It had flopped over the back of his pants, the sleeves blowing in the warm breeze.  
“You mind I call you Montana?”  
“No. Had only one nickname before. My daddy called me sloth.”  
“Doesn’t seem to fit.” Hickok kicked the toe of his boot against the framing. “I hear you got a wife. I’m a married man. Wife owns a circus.”  
“Does she?”  
“I wanted to marry Lydia – from the day I saw her. Wanted her to leave Franklin, but she chose propriety over me.”  
“I see.”  
“I hate that people talk about her, whisper about her. And who are they to talk, most of ‘em are whores. She’s as fine a woman as God put on this earth. Franklin wasn’t worthy of her. Beat her senseless. Nearly killed her once, nearly beat little Emma from her womb.”  
“Dear God.”  
Hickok sighed. “No law in Deadwood, but there is still talk.”  
“Yes, sir.”  
“Did right well at the Bella Union. Gonna call it a night, Montana.” He climbed down the stairs and Bullock watched him walk into the Grand Central before he picked up his hammer.  
“Evening, Mr. Hickok,” said E.B. Farnum.  
“Mrs. Newton pay a visit to Al Swearengen?”  
“Believe he did.”  
“Stay out of her room until their business is completed, or you’ll be dealing with me and Al.”  
Farnum swallowed. “I understand.”  
“Good night, then.” He walked up the stairs and headed to his room, but stopped when he heard the mewling of baby Emma. He knocked on Lydia’s door.  
“She’s teething,” sighed Lydia.  
“Why don’t I walk her? You get some sleep.”  
“How’d you do?”  
“Master of the Universe. I won over $500.”  
Lydia whistled. “I told you your luck would change.”  
“And your meeting with Swearengen?”  
“Better than I expected. He was entertaining a magistrate out of Yankton. Addy’s new name will be registered tomorrow.”  
“It’s all falling into place. We’ll be living together, man and wife, before we know it.” He kissed the tip of her nose. “You get to sleep and I’ll walk the baby.”  
Several minutes of pacing later, the door to the suite occupied by Brom and Alma Garret peeked open.  
Hickok recognized the eye of Alma Russel Garret. “Sorry to have woken you. The baby is teething.”  
“I do not sleep well as a rule,” sighed Alma. “My husband wishes to speak to you in the morning. He’s concerned about the viability of our claim. He tried to speak to Mr. Swearengen about taking back the claim, but without success.”  
Hickok thought back to the lazy sot who shoveled no more than a dozen half-spadesful of dirt before complaining of fatigue. “Not everyone one is destined to pull color from the ground. Not me.” He smiled.  
“Nor I.” She tilted her head.   
“But Lydia seems born to it.”  
Alma smiled at the baby. “Those girls love you.”  
“And I them. I love Lydia.”  
“Good. You’re a real man. Frank Newton never was.” Alma shut the door to her room.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hickok and Utter try to talk Brom Garret out of confronting Al Swearengen. Addy, with the help of Magistrate Claggett, officially becomes Adelaide Williams Hickok.

Brom Garret attempted a smile.   
Lydia nodded her head. “May I help you?”  
“I would like to speak to Mr. Hickok.”  
“He should be down shortly,” answered Charlie Utter. “He was commencing his morning ablution when I absquatulated our rooms.”  
Garret’s smile was thin, his eyes disbelieving. No matter how many times he enters and exits your room, you cannot convince me he is not lying with Lydia Newton. “I see.” Garret took a seat across from Charlie Utter.  
“And where is your fair wife?” asked Charlie tucking into what he hoped was bacon and eggs.  
“She is indisposed. She suffers from migraines.”  
“She has my sympathies. Nothing worse than an aching head.”  
“Will you be working your claim today?” asked Lydia trying to keep the sarcasm from her voice and finding her efforts unsuccessful.  
Garret seemed not to notice. “I do not believe so.”  
Lydia shrugged.  
“Mrs. Newton?”  
Lydia looked up to see the oily face of Magistrate Claggett. “Good morning, sir. I am hopeful you are holding the papers about which we spoke last evening.”  
“I do, madam.” Without asking, he took a seat across the table. “Is Mr. Hickok about? He will need to sign, of course.”   
“He is expected shortly. Mr. Utter just indicated he was engaged in the manly art of shaving.”  
“I see. Is your daughter lettered?”  
Addy shot him a look. “I am, sir. I am lettered in English, French, Italian, Latin and Ancient Greek.”  
“I see,” Claggett smiled. “You need only to sign the document in English.”  
“Thank you.” Addy leaned forward. “The bacon’s fine, but avoid the gruel.”  
“I shall.” He looked like he wished to say more, but was interrupted by the heavy footfalls of James Butler Hickok on the main staircase.  
Before Claggett could rise and defend his position, Brom Garret motioned to Hickok. “I must have a word.” He flapped his arms like a stork in a clumsy landing.  
Lydia nodded. “We can wait. This is Magistrate Claggett. He has documents finalizing Addy’s change in last name.”  
Hickok pointed at Garret. “You can wait.”  
“I will need two witnesses.”  
“Charlie, come on over,” said Hickok.  
“I would be most willing,” added E.B. Farnum who had slithered across the lobby like an eel over algae-covered rocks.  
Hickok stared at the hotelier, who in turn swallowed deeply. “Guess that’s alright. You lettered?”  
“Of course, sir.”  
“Well, then. Let’s get this done.”  
“Do you James Butler Hickok acquiesce to the taking of your surname by one Adelaide Williams Newton?”  
“The Newton needs to go away,” shouted Addy.  
“It will my dear, it will,” responded Claggett.  
“I do.”  
“Then sign here and here.” He pointed to a solid line on two identical documents. “And you agree, Mrs. Newton?”  
“I do.” Lydia took the pen and signed.  
“As a magistrate of the City of Yankton, I acknowledge that the child once known as Adelaide Williams Newton shall now be called Adelaide Williams Hickok, the name of her godfather and guardian.” He signed the documents with a flourish. “If you gentlemen will make your mark as witnesses…”  
“I’m lettered,” muttered Charlie. “Went to school as far as the third grade.”  
“I did as well,” harrumphed E.B. Farnum.  
Claggett waved both papers until the ink dried. “This copy is for you. You will receive a receipt from the clerk in Yankton.”  
“Thank you.” Lydia slid two ten dollar Eagles across the table to Magistrate Claggett. “One for the cost of the writ and one for its expedited filing.”  
Claggett nodded and palmed the coins in a well-practiced move. “I leave for Yankton this very morning. “My best wishes to you, Mrs. Newton and to you, young lady.”  
Addy smiled as she read the document. She stood up and smiled broadly to the room. “How do you do, everyone! I would like to introduce myself. My name is Adelaide Williams Hickok.” Addy curtseyed.  
“Good morning, Miss Hickok!” Richardson gave her a toothless smile.  
“May we speak now?” Brom Garret’s voice was full of exasperation.  
Hickok shot the popinjay a look. “Let me fetch a cup of coffee. This may be Deadwood, but it’s the closest thing to civilization in these parts.”  
“Of course,” muttered Garret as if he had just promised Hickok his first born.  
Hickok returned with his white porcelain mug of coffee. He stopped halfway to the table and took a long draw of the bitter, hot brew. He smiled to himself as he prolonged Brom Garret’s agony. “How can I help you, Mr. Garret,” he said as he placed the mug of coffee on the table and slid down onto the chair.  
“I need advice,” began Brom Garret. “I believe I have been,” he looked over his shoulder and glared at E.B. Farnum, “I believe I have been misled by Messrs. Swearengen and Farnum as to the viability of my claim.” His voice was an angry whisper.  
“You don’t say,” said Charlie Utter before he shoveled another forkful of eggs and bacon into his open mouth.  
“I do. I believe your friend,” he corrected himself, “our friend, Mrs. Newton may have been hornswoggled as well.”   
Lydia watched Claggett lean toward the hushed conversation.  
“I would like you to intervene on my behalf with Mr. Swearengen. Convince him of his error. I would pay you handsomely.”  
Hickok smiled. Brom Garret was either a fool or strapped for greenbacks if he wanted Swearengen to return his investment. He decided it was both.  
“And I won’t settle. I want the amount I invested returned in full.” Garret’s voice rose from a baritone whisper to a full-throated tenor.  
“Let me give you a word of advice,” said Charlie Utter running his slice of bread through the bacon fat. “Go home to New York and take your pretty wife with you. You ain’t winning no argument with Al Swearengen.”  
“Listen to the man, he’s giving you good advice. Chalk this up to experience and get outta Deadwood while you still can. ”  
Garret shot Lydia a look as if she were responsible for Wild Bill’s sage advice.  
“Don’t look at her like that,” said Hickok. “I don’t cotton to a man who is disrespectful to a woman. Not ever and especially not to her.”  
Garret popped out of his chair his well-manicured soft-skinned fingers in fists.  
“Think about what we told you,” said Hickok.   
Garret stomped up the stairs like a petulant child and just as he turned the corner toward his room E.B. Farnum shot out of the room as if by a cannon.  
“This has been a very interesting morning,” Claggett gave Lydia another oily smile and ineffectually drew the stained napkin across his upper lip. It remained as shiny as newly cleaned brass.  
“I thank you again for time and consideration, Magistrate.”  
The man nodded. “You can expect your letter in next week’s post.”  
*****  
“She’s turned him against me,” wailed Brom.  
“Who?”  
“Your friend, Lydia. I asked Mr. Hickok for his assistance and he refused me.”  
“What did he say?”  
“Hickok and his confederate, Charlie Utter, told me it was a fool’s errand to attempt to retrieve my stake. I will not leave Deadwood empty-handed. I cannot face daddy empty-handed.”  
And there it is, thought Alma. You bring me to this God forsaken hellhole, but it is all about your father.   
“I must speak again to Al Swearengen.”  
“You must gather your thoughts. Think things through. Do not speak to Mr. Swearengen until you have an ordered mind.”  
“Gather my thoughts, yes…” Brom Garret put his supercilious hat on his head and marched out of their hotel suite.  
Alma Garret walked to the window and watched as her husband talked to himself and paced up and down the thoroughfare. The residents of Deadwood turned their heads as if fearing they were in the presence of a madman and then rethinking their position to standing in the presence of the humorous gestures of an organ grinders monkey. After a half-hour of flailing arms and conversations with himself, Brom Garret turned into the doorway of the Gem Saloon. Alma closed her eyes. “No good can come of this.”


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The ill-fated love of Lydia and Bill comes to an end in Tom Nuttal's No. 10 saloon, courtesy of Jack McCall. I played a bit with the timing of the television show to add a final conversation between Hickok and Lydia. The funeral will be in the next chapter.

And no good did come. Brom Garret waltzed into the Gem Saloon and waxed euphoric to Al Swearengen about his family’s connections to the Pinkertons. Minutes later, Al Swearengen spun him like a top and the next thing anyone knew, Brom had agreed to a survey of his claim, accompanied by Al’s muscle, Dan Dority. The news of their encounter was all over the camp long before Garret, liquor on his breath, returned to the hotel to regale his wife of his mastery of Swearengen.  
Early the next morning Dority appeared, sober as a judge, with the body of Brom Garret across the back of a sway-backed paint.   
Dear God, what have they done! said Lydia to herself. She pushed aside her breakfast and with a quick, “Mind your sister,” she walked out onto the elevated sidewalk.  
Garret was a mess, his face a bloody pulp, but if Dority had administered a deathly beating, he didn’t show it. His clothes were clean, or as clean as Dan Dority’s clothes ever were. Lydia had looked at his hand as he placed it on the bannister before mounting the stairs. Not a scratch. She remembered Bill’s knuckles after administering frontier justice to Frank Newton. She had cleaned them, kissed them and wrapped them. They had been bloody and sore for days.   
Perhaps it was an accident, she thought and then a small sound made her look up. Al Swearengen was at his usual perch, his oiled hair raven black. He sipped coffee in a china cup, like today was any other day. And she knew. She ironed the emotions from her face just as she had earlier ironed the wrinkles from Emily’s dress. Behind her, she heard a commotion and turned.   
Alma Garret ghostly white, wearing only her nightdress, had made a small noise, something between a sob and the coo of a dove.  
“Oh Alma, I am so sorry,” whispered Lydia.  
Alma gave her a confused look as if she didn’t know her.  
She walked around the horse, checking every inch of Brom’s body in the hopes of finding life somewhere.  
“He fell,” muttered Dority and once again Lydia’s eyes fell to his hands. They were unmarked, but guilt came off him like a stink.  
“I want the doctor to examine him,” her voice surprisingly strong.  
“I told you he fell.”  
“Where?” asked Lydia.  
“We on the ridge near the top of the claim, up where the ivy is. I told him not to wear those citified clothes and especially those shoes.” Dority shook his head violently. “He never listened. It wasn’t his first fall, he was always slipping and sliding in those city shoes of his.”  
This one statement was fact. Lydia looked at the soles of Brom Garret’s “city shoes.” They were handmade, perhaps in Italy. Comfortable and useless. She had seen him slipping and sliding as he half-heartedly tossed spadesful of grit into the sifting box.  
“I want the doctor to examine him,” said Alma her voice rising.  
“I’ll accompany Mr. Dority to Doc Cochran’s, Alma.” Addy appeared at the door. “Addy, where is your sister?”  
“Richardson’s playing patty cake with her.” She looked to the dead body across the horse.   
Addy had seen more of her share of dead bodies – her father’s, Phil Coe and the other riffraff that populated Abilene. Lydia wondered if the little girl thought Brom Garret bore a resemblance to Frank Newton before Bill slapped the mare’s backside and sent him to Cheyenne or the devil. They both wore the same fawn shirt and brown trousers. “Addy, please take Mrs. Garret upstairs and help her dress.”  
“Yes, mama.”  
“Mr. Dority, if you would be so kind as to allow me to fetch Emily.”  
The big man nodded.  
Hours later, the doctor had ruled Garret’s death an accident. The lack of witnesses and physical evidence had worked to Dority’s favor, though no one thought him innocent.  
“There ain’t no law in Deadwood,” said Bill as he pulled on his boots. “Why does she want to talk to me, again?”  
“Farnum made a bid to buy back her claim. Farnum is Swearengen’s fool. I fear she wishes you to ascertain Al Swearengen’s involvement in her husband’s death.” Lydia looked away. “Alma is my friend, but I fear her request will put your life in forfeit.”  
“I’m gonna tell her to bury her husband and go back to New York. But if it comes to that, I know how to handle the likes of Al Swearengen.”  
Lydia sighed. “I hope she takes your advice.”  
“Her husband didn’t.”  
“He was a fool.”  
“And she’s an opium eater.” Bill stood and straightened his vest.  
“Sadly, she is and I expect she has been for some time.”  
“When you were making mischief on the Grand Tour?”  
Lydia nodded. “Even then. Her father…” Lydia let the rest of the sentence fall like leaves off a tree in an autumn rain.  
“He was,” he paused searching for the right word, “over familiar.”  
“I fear so.”  
“That ain’t just a game for the riffraff.”  
“No, I fear it happens in the best of families.”  
“Yours?”  
“We were never the best,” Lydia smiled then shook her head. “My father is a decent man. He wanted the best for me. He erred.”  
“Frank Newton was one hell of a mistake.”  
“Otis Russell, on the other hand, married well and gambled much of it away. He forced Alma into marriage with Brom Garret to insure his mounting debts would be paid. There was no thought to her betterment, her comfort. My father hoped I would be happy, that Frank and I could come to care for one another.”  
“But Otis Russell didn’t give a shit, only cared he’d have enough for the tables.” He shook his head. “The cards are like a siren for me. I can understand his addiction, but I could never marry off Addy to make sure I had enough greenbacks to sit at a poker table.” He looked through the window. “Our house will be ready soon.”  
“Can’t come soon enough,” said Lydia as she looked to the skeleton of their home standing high on a hill overlooking Deadwood. “I went up to inspect it yesterday. You can see Brom’s body from the bluff.”  
“No kidding. How long she gonna keep him there?”  
Lydia shrugged. “She doesn’t know. She can’t decide if she’ll bury him here or ship the body back to New York. The framing was reflected in the water. Brom’s eyes were open, staring lifelessly at the Dakota sky, perfectly framed by the beams.”  
“Hope Addy didn’t see it.”  
“No, she was with the foundling.”  
“Jane says she’s making progress.”  
“She is.”  
“She’s a cute little thing.” He put his hand on the door.  
“She is.” She stepped forward for his kiss. “Please be careful.”  
“Might stop by the No. 10.”  
“The sirens calling your name?”  
“I believe so.” He stopped. “I had words with Charlie last night.”  
“About?”  
“Lots of things. He doesn’t think I sleep enough, thinks I drink too much and gamble too much.”  
“Given the number of times I’ve nearly stumbled across him urinating in the alley by the No. 10, he has some nerve.”  
“Told him, I’d go to hell on my own terms. Then he asked if it was necessary to take you with me.”  
Lydia shook her head. “I don’t care about the talk. For crying out loud, look who’s talking.”  
“I know.” He pulled the door to the second room closed. Addy’s eyes never wavered from her textbook. Bill pulled Lydia into his arms and gave her a kiss for the ages.   
Minutes later, Lydia and her daughters exited the hotel. Through the door, she saw Bill and Al Swearengen. Swearengen pulled a cork from a bottle of whiskey and poured. “For the last few days, I’ve been locked in my room weeping,” she heard Swearengen say before turning the carriage toward her claim.  
*****  
“Thank you, Mr. Wu.” Lydia smiled and laced the bag of vegetables over the carriage handle grip and adjusted the canopy to keep the sun out of Emily’s eyes. His face usually impassive, broke into a smile. He pointed to her enormous stomach and then his ice house before making a joke that crossed all barriers of language and culture.  
Lydia and Addy laughed despite worrying the noise would wake the fretful Emily.  
“Why is Emily feeling so poorly?” asked Addy as she looked down at her sister sister. “Is she feverish? Her cheeks as so red.”  
“Teething.”  
“Hey watch where you’re going,” shouted a man with a drooping eyelid.  
“My apologies, sir.” Lydia straightened the path of the baby carriage.  
“Yeah, you’d better apologize,” he slurred.  
Lydia caught the eye of Seth Bullock. He walked towards Lydia, but his eyes never left that of the hoople head.  
“What was that all about?”  
“Just some drunk.”  
“You’re back early.”  
“Emily’s fretting over a new tooth, so I called it a day, brought some provisions and now I think I’ll take a nap.”  
“Where’s Bill?”  
“Nuttal’s I expect.”  
“Heard he did rather well the other night at the Bella Union.”  
“He did. I would have thought he’d go back there, but he had a game to settle on with Tom.” She shrugged.  
“What was that noise, mama?” asked Addy. “Was that a gunshot?”  
“I don’t know,” answered Lydia, but soon she did.  
“Someone shot Wild Bill at the No. 10,” one man yelled to another as they raced down what passed for the main street of Deadwood. His voice sounded almost joyous.  
“Oh my God!” Lydia screamed. She dropped the vegetables she had purchased from Mr. Wu into the mud and darted out of Chinaman’s Alley as fast has her feet and her enormous bulk would allow her. “Get out of my way, get out!” Lydia screamed as she pushed away faceless men into the mud and raced into the saloon. Seth Bullock had beat her to the No. 10 stood as still as a statue, his eyes wet with tears as he watched the life ebb from his new friend. Jane Cannary, who had sprinted the short distance from the hotel, was swaying with shock, sobbing and guzzling a fifth of rock gut.  
“Bill!” Lydia ran to him. His left hand twitched and for a second hope sprang. “He’s not dead,” she whispered as she cradled him to her breast. But then the hand fell still and Hickok fell from his chair, pulling Lydia onto the floor with him.  
“Mama!” Addy screamed from outside the saloon.  
“Oh, Seth, please don’t let her and Emma in!” pleaded Lydia. “They can’t see this.”  
“I’ll see to them,” said the man behind the bar.   
“Let me help you,” said Bullock, kneeling down.  
“He can’t have left us,” sobbed Lydia as she rested her head on the dirty floor of the saloon.  
“I’m so sorry, Mrs. Newton,” whispered Bullock. “Him falling on you didn’t hurt your babies, did it?”  
“No.”  
“We got coffins made at the hardware store. I’ll take care of him. Sol and I will see to it.”  
“Please don’t touch him,” Lydia wept.  
“I must ma’am.”  
She shook her head. “I’m not forbidding you to move the body. I want to go back to the Grand Central and fetch a change of clothes and his razor. Bill was most fastidious about his appearance. He needs to be bathed and I won’t have him go into the ground with blood and gore on his face or his shirt.”  
“I understand,” said Bullock gently.  
“Mama, is it true?” asked Addy as Lydia exited Nuttel’s No. 10 saloon.   
“I’m afraid so,” answered her mother. “A scoundrel named Jack McCall back shot your Uncle Bill.”  
“Will he live?”  
“No, my sweet girl, he died in my arms.”  
“I’m glad he wasn’t all alone at the end. Is that his blood on your dress? Lydia looked down at the homespun shirtwaist she wore under the hip waders. There was a flower of blood right over her heart.  
“Yes, I guess it is.”  
Her daughter reached up and touched the blood stain with the same reverence Lydia had once seen Catholic pilgrims touch the relics of a saint. Addy touched the blood to her face, creating a stripe of vermillion from forehead to chin.  
“Walk with me Addy back to the hotel.”  
“I want to see him, mama!” she pleaded. Lydia took Emma from her daughter’s arms.  
“You will. But not until after I bathe him and get him a clean shirt.”  
“I understand,” she said although she really didn’t.  
Lydia leaned down and took her daughter gently by the hand. “I want to you remember him as he was and how much he loved you, Emma and me. I don’t want to you remember him as you’ll see him today.”  
“He loved the babies, too,” Addy said.  
“He did.”  
Bullock walked out of the saloon. “Tom lock the doors. I don’t want anyone to touch him. We’re not gonna move him until Lydia gets Addy safely into the Grand Central. “Someone go find Charlie Utter.”  
“Thank you, Seth, but Charlie’s in Cheyenne.” Lydia held Addy’s head to her hip as they walked to the hotel. The child was wrecked with sobs, so much so it sounded more like choking than tears.  
“Shit, it’s true,” murmured Swearengen as he watched Lydia and Addy stumble in grief down the thoroughfare. He flinched at the sight of the rust-colored stripe down Addy’s face.  
Lydia stopped to let Addy vomit onto the street. She looked up at Al Swearengen, her face was blotchy, her heart clearly broken. “Did you have anything to do with this?” she bit out. “This hellhole is your creature. Nothing happens here without your say so.”  
“No,” Swearengen answered. For once he spoke simply and uttered the truth.  
“You best hope I do not discover you’re lying to me. Who is Jack McCall?”  
“Some hoople head,” Swearengen shrugged his shoulders. “I am deeply sorry for your loss. I won’t lie to you, your man made me uneasy, but I don’t know this McCall fellow and he wasn’t acting under my agency. Shall I send Jewell over?”  
She nodded and led her daughters into the Grand Central.  
“One word from you Mr. Farnum, and I’ll beat your head in with a rock,” said Lydia. “I need the key to Mr. Hickok’s room as well. As God as my witness, he’ll be buried in a clean shirt.”  
Wordlessly, the proprietor of the Grand Central slid the keys across the counter and as she mounted the stairs, he flew from behind the desk hooting like a startled barn owl.  
“She’s a maniac!” Farnum shrieked as he crossed the threshold of Gem. “A murderous maniac!”  
“Shut the fuck up, E.B.,” snarled Dan.  
Al opened the door from his office and barked down an order to Jewell,” Hobble your way across the thoroughfare and see to Mrs. Newton’s children.”  
“Yes, Al,” and under her breath, “poor babies.”  
“What has happened?” A.W. Merrick asked Seth Bullock.  
“A scoundrel named Jack McCall has done a black deed today,” began Bullock. “He walked into Tom’s place, back shot Wild Bill Hickok and shouted ‘Take that damn you!’ He tried stealing a horse, but its owner had loosened the cinch and he fell into the mud.”  
“Dear God. Why would he do such a thing? Had they a quarrel?”  
“Tom says after a spate of bad luck at cards, Hickok beat McCall out of every last dime. Hickok gave McCall a dollar to buy dinner. McCall took it as an insult.”  
“Good God.”  
“Can you help us carry him across the street to our tent? Mrs. Newton’s coming back to dress him for the funeral.”  
“The poor woman, they were so devoted. When I first met them, I swore they were married.”  
“They should have been, would have been,” Bullock shook his head in disgust. “Tom, unlock the door.”  
The owner of the No. 10 Saloon removed his hat and wiped his brow. “Hickok was a fine man, tough. To go out like that…”  
“Let’s get him across the street,” said Bullock as Merrick, Sol Starr and Tom Nuttal joined him in lifting Hickok’s still warm body and carrying the West’s most famous lawman across the street to the makeshift tent that served as the camp’s hardware store.  
The dresser drawer squeaked in protest as Lydia pulled it open. In the top drawer were Bill’s razor, cup and soap, a comb, and a short pile of papers. She sat down on the bed and read them quickly. He had written several drafts of a letter to Agnes Thatcher Lake asking for a divorce, telling her he had started proceedings in Cheyenne. The bottom pages were early pencil drafts of the letter, populated with cross-outs and erasures. The top page was in ink, firm but apologetic to Agnes. “Thank you for leaving me this, Bill,” whispered Lydia as she loaded the shaving kit, his comb and a clean union suit, shirt and clothes brush into Hickok’s portmanteau. She folded the letters and put them in her pocket. “Agnes will never see these, Bill.”  
Before Lydia knocked on the door to her room, Alma Garrett opened her door. She took in Lydia, her breast rust-colored with the blood of Bill Hickok, her pants leg yellow with the vomit of her elder daughter. “I’m so very sorry, Lydia. You and Mr. Hickok both were such a balm to me after the death of Mr. Garret. Please, give me your best dress, I will take it to the Chinese laundry to be dyed black for tomorrow’s service.”  
“Thank you for your kindness.” She walked into her room and removed a pale blue maternity dress, a cream-colored dress belonging to Addy and a white muslin baby’s dress.  
“It’s a warm day. They should dry quickly.”  
Lydia gave something approaching a smile and turned to the Al Swearengen’s cleaning woman, “Jewel, I have everything I need save a bucket of water. You can send Emma along with Addy in an hour’s time.”  
“He ain’t had nothing to do with it,” assured the young woman. “I’d know, and I’d tell you if he did. It knocked him off his chair when he heard.”  
“I thank you for that,” replied Lydia, who had no idea if she believed the young woman or not. She put a bar of her own lilac soap into Hickok’s portmanteau and pulled the door behind her.  
Al Swearengen and the fool, Richardson, stood at the bottom of the stairs.  
“Richardson, I need a bucket of water.”  
“Yes’em,” and he scurried off to the pump behind the hotel.  
“I’d like to speak with you for a moment,” said Swearengen taking her hand.  
“All right.”  
“We will never speak of this again,” said Al. “You’re mostly right, not a fucking thing happens in Deadwood without my say so – I have a taste in nearly everything that goes on inside the confines of this camp and the road agents who act without. The night when the squarehead family from Minnesota was done in, I learned after the fact. Mr. Hickok shot dead one of the miscreants, a second, who I know wanted Hickok dead and who acted on my authority, died at Wild Bill’s hand in the No. 10. I killed the third. Gutted him like a fish, but I had nothing to do with Jack McCall.”  
He looked upward at the sound of Alma Garrett’s footsteps. “Mr. Swearengen.”  
“Mrs. Garrett.”  
“I’m taking Mrs. Newton’s garments to be dyed black.”  
“I had nothing to do with the events of today.”  
“Mrs. Newton,” the eyes of Rev. Smith were wet with tears. “I am so very sorry for your loss. I was just discussing the readings with Mr. Bullock and Mr. Starr.”  
“I’m sure your choices will be most appropriate.”  
“It’s from the Book of Numbers.”


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The funeral of Wild Bill Hickok. I have purloined some of the wonderful dialogue written by David Milch and acted so brilliantly by Roy McKinnon, who played the doomed Rev. Smith. If you do not possess the DVD, you can watch the scene on Youtube.

Richardson followed Lydia, head down, along the main thoroughfare to the tent which still served as Bullock and Starr Hardware. She looked at the nearly completed hardware store and closed her eyes. Without Bill, she wouldn’t feel safe in the hotel and her builders were far less industrious than Seth Bullock.  
“I’m so very sorry,” whispered Sol Starr. “He was a wonderful man and I could tell how happy you both were in each other’s company.”  
“Thank you.”  
“We laid him in here.”  
“My condolences, Mrs. Hickok.” He turned purple-faced at the error. “Mrs. Newton.”  
“Off the record, Mr. Merrick?”  
The newspaperman nodded.  
“Today and tomorrow, I am the Widow Hickok. Henceforth, that title will belong to Agnes Thatcher Lake.”  
“I understand.”  
She took the bucket of water. “Thank you, Richardson.”  
The man’s head bobbed up and down as if it were on a spring. “I’m real sorry, Mrs.”  
“Thank you, Richardson. I know your words are heartfelt. Gentlemen, if you’ll excuse me.” Lydia entered the tent and closed her eyes.  
She wasn’t dreaming. When she opened them, Bill was still dead. His arms folded across his lean frame as if in sleep. She set down the bucket and the portmanteau, untied his tie and unbuttoned his shirt. She knew she must work quickly before his limbs became stiff and immovable. After she removed his shirt, she washed the blood from his hair and neck. Rather than use his comb, she ran her fingers through his long curls, just as he loved her to do.  
Next she cleaned the wound, wiping away the dirt, blood and brains. Before she put on his shirt, she bent forward and caressed his still body. It was cold and she was glad of it, for had it still been warm, she could not have born it. She ran her hands up both of his arms, across his chest and ribs – caresses she had dreamt of, but never allowed herself. She eased his right arm into a clean shirt, then kissed him full on the mouth before attending to the other. She pulled a straw clothes brush from the portmanteau and dispatched the saw dust Tom Nuttell lavishly telegraphed across the wooden floor of his saloon.   
When she was done, she sat down and cried, a high-pitched keening, rocking back and forth on the edge of the camp cot she shared with Bill’s body. She cared not who heard, and it was impossible her cries were not heard throughout the camp. The uneasy shuffle of the feet of Rev. Smith, Bullock, Starr and Merrick outside the tent flap, the murmur of their concerned voices had no effect on her grief. She cared not who heard or if the whole camp heard, she was lost, lost in her grief.  
“Bill how could you leave us alone! Dear God, what shall I do in the place? Once Frank hears, he will be back.”  
She repeated the same words over and over.  
“Who will help me look after the boys?” She rubbed her stomach knowing in her heart she carried sons.  
Finally, with one cathartic sob, she stopped. She splashed what water remained in the bucket over her face and wiped it with the same towel she had used to dry Bill’s face. She stood, straightened the farce of her clothing and opened the tent flap.  
“I thank you gentlemen for your assistance,” she whispered. “If one of you should be so kind as to fetch my daughters. They’re at the hotel.”  
“I’ll do it,” answered Sol Starr.  
“We caught up with that miscreant McCall,” said Tom Nuttel, whose face was pale white, his hands blood red. “Beat him as best I could. They got him tied up in Wu’s icehouse.”  
“Will there be a trial?” she asked. “Bill always said there was no law in Deadwood. If there be done, I will shoot the cur myself.”  
“I’ve no doubt of that Lydia,” returned Bullock. “Hope it don’t come to that.”  
“I hope so, too. I must impose. My daughters and I will spend the night here with Bill.” She looked over her shoulder. “I will not leave him alone until he is in the ground and words have been spoken over him.”  
“And someone will watch over you as well,” said Bullock. “We’ll bring you another cot.”  
“I thank you.”  
“Best I leave now for your daughters.” Starr put his hat on his head and walked in the direction of the hotel.   
“I must take your leave, Lydia,” Merrick took her hand. “I must write a story of today’s events, but your story I will allow for your heart and the hearts of your daughters alone.”  
“I thank you as well.”  
“Should I learn about a trial, I will inform you.” He tipped his hat and followed Sol Starr.  
Starr was nearly at the door of the hotel when he heard a small sound and turned to see the solemn face of Swearengen’s favorite whore, Trixie. At her back was Swearengen’s muscleman, Dan Dority, and lackey, Johnny Burns. Sol wondered if Lydia were to take matters into her own hands if Burns would be charged with shouldering McCall’s corpse to Wu’s pig sty. Carting dead bodies to Wu’s seemed to constitute a great deal of Burns’s job.  
“How’s she doing?” asked Burns.  
“Not well,” said Sol. He tipped his hand to Trixie. “I’m to fetch her daughters. Lydia’s planning to sit with the body this evening.”   
“My,” muttered Dority. He tried to think of anyone, outside Al, who would pay that much mind to his dead body.  
She asked me to give this to Al. Should anyone wish to toast the memory of Mr. Hickok following the funeral…”  
Trixie lowered the $50 Eagle between her breasts and into her combination. “I’ll see he gets it.” She took a pull on her cigarette.  
“If you’ll excuse me.” Sol bounded through the door and up the stairs.  
E.B. Farnum looked over his shoulder at the slim figure of Starr taking the stairs two at a time. “His britches appear afire!”  
“He’s fetching the girls. Addy and Emily will sit all night with their mama,” said Burns.  
“Al’d like to appear her wails had no effect on him,” said Trixie, “but he left his perch, closed the door and the windows. Couldn’t bear it.”  
“It was like the screech of an owl in the jaws of a coyote,” returned Farnum.  
Trixie rolled her eyes.  
Sol Starr emerged with Addy and Emily, Jewel dragging her leg behind her.  
“I’m going with’em, make sure Lydia don’t need nothing,” yelled Jewel.  
“You do that,” returned Swearengen, who had returned to his usual perch. He had replaced his usual cup of coffee, with an afternoon libation – a fifth of whiskey, which he drank straight from the bottle. He wiped his mouth on his sleeve.  
“Noises from the gates of hell, Al. You hear’em?”  
Al Swearengen’s raven’s black eyes bore down on Farnum. The hotelier gulped and wrung his hands.  
“Where is she?”  
“Tent serves as the hardware store. They’re gonna still there all night,” answered Dan. “She sent the Jew with an Eagle. Anyone who wishes to drink a toast to Mr. Hickok after the funeral will be paid for.”  
“The Widow Garret brought some dresses to Wu,” added Johnny, who had been depositing the body of a hooplehead at the pigsty. They’ll all be in black tomorrow.”  
“And for a long time,” said Al before taking a sip of whiskey. How have I let this family get under my skin?  
A.W. Merrick turned the side of building his newspaper shared with the Gem. “Thought I’d give you first look at tomorrow’s headlines, Al.”  
Swearengen nodded. “Come on up.”  
*****  
“Oh mama, the flies are something awful,” said Addy as she picked up Bill’s sombrero and waved the inky black pests away from the exit wound. “How many more?”  
Sol Starr tiled his head and looked down the thoroughfare. “I fix there’s about fifty more still in line.”  
“Fifty,” whispered Lydia. It was the first word she had spoken in an hour. She was silently composing her letter to Hickok’s mother, Polly. It would be hugely different from the letters she penned each Christmas, but she hoped Polly would take great solace in receiving Bill’s last photograph taken with Addy.  
It seemed like only seconds, when Lydia heard the voice of Rev. Smith, “We are ready.”  
She opened her eyes to see the roughhewn casket on the shoulders of Bullock and Starr. “Addy, would you stand outside with Rev. Smith.”  
“No, mama.”  
Lydia didn’t insist. “We must give the men room,” she said pushing her daughter into the corner.  
Bullock, Starr, the reverend and Merrick helped lay Hickok’s body in the pine box. With difficulty they lifted onto the back of a wagon, with Lydia and Addy following the cortege, their hands on the coffin.  
“Who’s that?” asked Addy.  
Lydia turned and looked at the fancy-dressed woman she knew to be the madam at the Bella Union. What is her name? Joanie, Joanie Stubbs. She nodded at the madam, who brushed away the white scarf, which fell long away from the men’s styled top had to which she had pinned it. Joanie gave Lydia a shy smile. “Her name is Joanie Stubbs. When Bill won all that money at the Bella Union, she was the dealer.”  
“She’s awful pretty.”  
“She is.”  
“I think she’s nice.”  
“She may be.”  
Bullock and Starr lead several men to the back of the wagon. They carried Bill’s coffin to the side of the grave and set it upon two sawhorses.  
Rev. Smith took his place at the head of the grave. “Today, Mr. Hickok will lie beside two brothers, one he likely killed and one he killed for certain and he’s been killed now in turn. So much blood.”  
Lydia dropped her parasol and looked straight to heaven, the sun hot on her face.  
“And on the battlefields of the Brothers’ War, I saw more blood than this and asked then as to the purpose.”  
There is no purpose, Lydia thought.   
“And did not know and don’t know the purpose now.”  
Where is Jane? Lydia asked and looked first over her shoulders. Her question was soon answered as she turned back to face the preacher and spied Jane’s pale, tear-stained and in all likelihood drunken face peaked through the brush.   
“Let us now sing ‘How Firm a Foundation’ as Mr. Hickok is laid to rest.”  
Lydia took a step forward, bent and kissed the coffin. Emily beat on the pine with her chubby hands.   
“I don’t know if I can,” whispered Addy. “I want to.”  
“I’ll hold your hand,” said Lydia and watched Adeline Williams Hickok kiss the pine box.  
When Addy was done, Lydia turned to Joanie Stubbs and the men assembled. “Thank you for coming. Provision has been made for you to salute Mr. Hickok at the Gem Saloon.” She turned back and watched Bullock, Starr and four other men lowered the coffin into the grave with stout ropes as the guitar continued to play the hymn. When Seth Bullock took the shovel to begin to fill the grave, Lydia waved him away.  
“Addy, you go first.” The little girl managed to push a half-shovel of dirt and grit into the grave. She handed Seth Bullock the shovel while her mother handed her a squirming Emily. As she took the shovel from Seth Bullock, her tears returned. One, two, three, four, five spadesful. Then she stopped. She must have swayed a bit, because Sol Starr took her arm.  
“Don’t,” he whispered. “For Addy’s sake, don’t.” He feared she’d throw herself into the grave.  
Seth Bullock began to fill the hole in earnest, but stopped with the arrival of Merrick. Lydia hadn’t seen him leave.  
“They’ve let him go,” he said between sneezes.  
“Let who go?” asked Lydia.  
“McCall. While you’ve been here, they held a miner’s court at the Gem. They found McCall not guilty as Hickok had killed McCall’s brother in Abilene.”  
“It’s a lie,” shouted Addy.  
Lydia watched the backs of the men as they half-jogged toward the Gem, before fainting at the side of Bill’s grave.


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lydia writes to Hickok's mother and confesses her love for his son. She with Merrick discuss the miner's hearing with Magistrate Claggett.

“Did you say your prayers,” sneered Cy Tolliver.  
“I did,” answered Joanie Stubbs as she pulled the hatpin holding her top hat to her curls.  
“I heard the Widow Hickok threw herself into the grave.”  
Joanie gave Tolliver the snake eye. “She did no such thing. What she did do was send tonight’s business to the Gem. Salutes to Wild Bill Hickok on the house.”  
“He never drank there but once,” groused Tolliver as he ran a Cuban cigar under his nose.  
“Heard they let that fella go,” said Joanie.  
“They did. Jury found him not guilty. He wasn’t too keen on leaving, but saner minds prevailed and he’s probably halfway to Cheyenne by now.”  
“He won’t get far.”  
“Won’t he?”  
“Mr. Bullock went after him.”  
Tolliver hated when she knew more than he did. Clearly she had been playing along this whole time. “Did he?”  
“He seems a man who gets what he’s after.”  
“Does he?”  
“Where’s Andy?”  
“Don’t know,” Tolliver lied. He had dispatched Andy Cramed during the funeral. Smallpox was bad for business. “He has disappeared into the vapor.”  
“I’m gonna stop in later to check on Mrs. Newton,” said Joanie as she sashayed up the stairs.  
“You already took the afternoon off,” Tolliver looked over his shoulder at the ascending madam.  
“I did.”  
*****  
Lydia opened the top drawer of the bureau. She breathed a sigh of relief, grateful that for once, it did not squeak. She removed a fresh linen handkerchief before crossing the room to the small desk by the window. The flame from the candle jumped in the evening breeze, but the four handkerchiefs, soaked with tears hung limp and unmoving on the washstand rail.  
Bill’s portmanteau and possessions were tucked in a corner, safe for a time from the prying eyes of E.B. Farnum. Addy and Emma were snoring softly, though Addy’s face was wrinkled in grief. Lydia held onto the back of the chair and stared for several minutes at the blank piece of stationary, which had tormented her for the better part of an hour, before her eyes blurred with tears once again. She wiped her eyes with the fresh handkerchief, took a deep breath and lowered herself onto the chair.   
“It must be done,” she whispered before picking up the pen and dipping it into the well.  
My dearest Mrs. Hickok,  
Oh how I wish this were one of my cheery Christmas missives! Or perhaps a letter to regale you with news of Addy’s remarkable academic prowess and her latest endeavors! Perhaps the announcement of the birth of my twins! But I write not in joy, but in sorrow.   
By the time you receive this letter, the newspapers will have published news of the death of your son and my dearest friend, James Butler. But here are the facts of the matter as I know them.  
Yesterday afternoon, the life of our beloved James Butler was cut short by an assassin’s bullet. Deadwood is a filthy, terrible place filled with men desperate for gold and notoriety. Jack McCall, the scourge who took the life of our beloved James Butler, is such a desperate man. His tenure here has been notorious. He is a drunk, a thief, a debaucher, a card cheat and now a murderer.  
He has many monikers, Broken Nose Jack being the most often heard. J.B. had played cards with McCall on two occasions. In the first, McCall won and the second, he lost badly to your son. Being the man he was, J.B. gave McCall money to buy breakfast. This apparently was not received with gratitude and good humor, but an insult. Shortly after J.B. sat down to a game of chance in Nuttal’s No. 10 saloon, Jack McCall entered the establishment, uttered an epithet, pulled his iron and shot your son from behind.  
Addy, Emma and I were in Chinaman’s Alley purchasing vegetables when we heard the shot. I raced as best I could to the saloon. Your son was still alive when I entered. I took him in my arms and held him until he breathed his last. Also in the saloon was a Mr. Seth Bullock and Jane Cannary. Both were horrified and devastated by your son’s murder.  
Mr. Bullock and several other men carried your son’s body to his tent. There, I bathed him and dressed him in his best shirt. He was always so fastidious in his appearance and I could not allow him to enter heaven and be embraced by his father and brother in a dirty shirt. We – Addy, Emma and I – stayed with him all night in that tent and sat with him the following day as a parade of well-wishers, nearly the entirety of the camp, paid their respects. Then, with all due deference, we carried his body to boot hill for burial. Our local preacher, Rev. Smith, gave affine account of himself with an excellent sermon at the gravesite. As we sang a hymn, he was lowered into the ground. I allowed Addy the honor of putting the first shovel of earth into the grave and then I took the shovel and did the same. Whether it was the terrible heat, my pregnancy, my heightened emotions or all three, I fainted. I understand certain members of the press have been told I threw myself into the grave.  
McCall was apprehended forthwith by Tom Nuttal the owner of the saloon and was incarcerated in the ice house of a Chinese merchant named, Wu. While we buried Wild Bill, the local businessmen and miners held a hearing in the Gem Saloon. Sadly, Mr. McCall was acquitted of the charge of murder after he claimed your son had murdered his brother while the marshal of Abilene, Kansas. As I lived in Abilene for the duration of J.B.’s tenure there, I can attest that this is a falsehood. Following the “trial”, McCall was encouraged to leave the camp and left via the road to Cheyenne.   
Mr. Bullock is in hot pursuit of Jack McCall and has vowed to bring him to justice. Like J.B., Mr. Bullock once served as a peace officer in the Montana Territory. While he now runs a hardware store with a Mr. Solomon Starr, Mr. Bullock’s commitment to law and order runs quite deep. But it is not sheer civic responsibility that drives him to bring McCall to the bar of justice, but his abiding friendship with your son. I have asked Mr. Bullock to inform me as to where he brings McCall for trial as I intend to write to the prosecuting attorney and offer to testify.  
We met Messrs. Bullock and Starr shortly after our arrival. They have proved to be great friends in both life and in death. J.B. could often be seen in cordial conversation with both men, but especially Mr. Bullock, whom he nicknamed Montana. Perhaps, their years as peace officers gave them much in common.  
Messrs. Bullock and Starr built the coffin in which your son’s body rests. They served as pall-bearers and filled the grave. I owe them a great deal.  
Perhaps you have supposed over the years that I love…loved…your son. I did and do with all my heart, though I pledge to you, nothing untoward ever happened between us. I can say with all honesty he was the great love of my life. For all the truth in the statement Wild Bill Hickok was a tough man, like you, I knew a different side. He was kind and thoughtful. He was funny and gentle. And he loved me. He asked me to come away with him when he left Abilene, but I chose respectability over my heart. And now I bear the guilt of that decision. I know I would have made a good life with your son, we would have Addy and a brood of other happy, healthy, well-loved children and he would not have died in Tom Nuttal’s saloon.   
My parents supposed they had made me an excellent marriage in Franklin Fellowes, but they erred terribly. Frank can, when it suits his purposes, be a man of great charm. But your son was never fooled. I cannot repeat J.B.’s colorful description of Frank.   
When your son was marshal, he learned that Frank was beating me and administered swift justice. But the beatings began again after J.B. left Abilene. I was not the only recipient of Frank’s brutality, he often slapped Addy and had started to raise his hand to tiny Emma. Seventy-five miles from Deadwood, he split my lip – I was not the subject of his brutality, he was aiming for Emma. He was angry she wished to nurse at my breast. Unfortunately for Frank, your son witnessed the event. As your son rode toward our wagon, his face a thundercloud, Frank began to sob, beg for mercy and even soiled himself. J.B. was relentless. When he was finished, he threw Frank over the back of a horse, slapped the horse and sent him on his way.  
Frank promised that day to never darken my door, but I fear the news of your son’s death might entice him to return to Deadwood and I fear for the lives of my children, born and unborn, as well as my own. And if word comes to Frank that not only is J.B. dead, but that our claim has borne fruit, I am convinced he will return to kill us and take possession of the claim. There is no law in Deadwood.  
I end this letter with the only happy news I have. Shortly, before your son died, he gave his last name to Addy. For years, Addy has chafed at the name Newton and after Frank’s departure, she asked if she could have his name. He was so pleased. An official from Yankton will see that the papers are registered. In addition, your son gave Addy the most thoughtful and generous gifts for her birthday. One was a volume of mathematical theorems, inscribed by the author who serves as the Dean of Mathematics at Columbia College in New York. The other was a history of noted women mathematicians by the same author. When I think of how happy we all were that day.  
I will close now. I am overwrought and exhausted. I slept not a wink last evening, I just sat watch over my beloved, running my fingers through his hair and thinking the future we planned together is in ruins.  
With all my love, I am most sincerely,  
Lydia  
P.S. Should the twins be boys, which I believe in my heart, one will be named James Butler the other William Alonzo for his father.  
*****  
Lydia felt the eyes of her eldest upon her.   
“Are we going to the claim, mama?”  
“Yes.” Lydia struggled to sit up in the lumpy bed. “To the claim and house both.”  
“I cannot wait to sleep in my own bed,” sighed Addy. She turned and looked at her guardian’s belongings. “He’s gonna come, mama. Soon as he hears the news, he’ll come.”  
“I know. That’s why before we go out to the claim, I need to stop at Mr. Wu’s for more apples. And we need to pick some flowers for Bill’s grave.”  
The little girl nodded. “I want to visit him every day.” Her lip trembled.  
“We will. I wrote a letter last night to your Grandma Polly.”  
“I’ll write her tonight.”  
“Come on, we’ve got a full day.”  
“Good morning ladies,” said the newspaperman Merrick. He took a look at Lydia’s hip boots and shook his head. “You’re going back out to the claim, today?”  
“I need the distraction of spadesful of grit,” answered Lydia with a sad smile.   
“This is terrible business. Such a great man.”  
“No doubt others of your trade will take the opportunity to malign him. A slander.” She put two bowls of lumpy porridge on the table. Addy turned up her nose, pushed the bowl away and rested her face on her crossed arms.  
Merrick shook his head. “You are sadly correct. Yellow journalism is the scourge of my profession!”  
“Charlie will be devastated,” said Lydia pouring herself a coffee.  
“No doubt Mr. Utter will be quite prostrate with grief,” agreed Merrick. “As to the results of yesterday’s miscarriage of justice…” He paused and sipped his coffee.  
“It’s all a lie. I lived in Abilene when Wild Bill Hickok was brought in to tame it. If he had killed a man named McCall while he was marshal, I would have known it. I will wager McCall never had a brother.”  
“You are probably right. The man was a cur. A lie such as the one he told at that hearing would have come as easy to him as breathing. But I fear the fix was in. No one wanted to undertake a trial for fear of upsetting whatever the fine minds in Yankton have in store for us.”  
“Was Magistrate Claggett in attendance?” asked Lydia. She smelled the porridge before taking a spoonful. Satisfied, she gave a small spoonful to Emma.  
“He was the presiding officer. He allowed McCall’s perjury.”  
“He better turn in those papers,” hissed Addy.  
“Here he comes,” said Merrick and they watched portmanteau in hand, the magistrate descend the stairs.  
“Leaving our fair burgh, sir?” asked Merrick.  
“I must return to Yankton.” He put his hat on a peg. He patted his pocket. “Your papers will be filed. They were signed well before the tragedy. I will be sending an emissary. His name is Silas Adams. He will bring you the proof of registration.”  
“Good,” said Addy who nevertheless decided to give the magistrate the stink eye.  
“It was a tragedy, a great tragedy,” said Claggett.  
“Nearly as much as the outcome of that farce of a hearing,” returned Merrick.  
“I am stung, sir.” He sat straighter in his chair. “I presided. I was not a member of the jury.”  
“And you allowed perjured testimony, sir. Mr. Bullock will bring Jack McCall to justice, of that I am sure,” said Lydia. “And I am also sure Jack McCall cannot declare double jeopardy in spite of yesterday’s events. He will be tried and hanged, and I will testify he committed perjury yesterday. James Butler Hickok killed no brother of Jack McCall. I was a resident of Abilene during his sojourn there and will testify to that fact.”  
“You don’t say. McCall was on the western road to Cheyenne when he left the camp. I understand the fall is quite lovely in Wyoming.”  
“Cheyenne or Yankton, it makes no difference to me. I will go there and undo the injustice done yesterday.”  
“I see.” Claggett took a long look at her enormous abdomen. She would go nowhere.  
“When can I expect Mr. Adams?”  
“In a few weeks’ time.”  
“Come, Addy. We have a busy day. I thank you for your time and conversation, Magistrate.”


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In this chapter I throw more than a little shade on the alleged marriage of Wild Bill Hickok and Agnes Thatcher Lake. While scholars have put to rest the myth of Hickok and Calamity Jane, they have given Lake a pass. I don't buy it. I believe Hickok, who had previously lied to Lake and told her he was married, was ossified drunk when he married Lake. Furthermore, the minister who married him wrote he thought neither one meant it. Enjoy.

“Good morning, Al,” Lydia blocked the sun from her eyes with a bare hand. “Have you heard the news? Doc’s taking the pest tent down.”  
“Thank the good Lord,” said Swearengen. He saluted her with his china cup. He pointed to the hill. “Looks like your house is nearly finished.”  
“There is still much to be done with the interior, but I should be moved in by next week. I ordered a special library door from St. Louis. Charlie delivered it yesterday along with the stove and my furniture. He contributed mightily to Addy’s cuss jar.”  
“Pray tell, Lydia, what is a library door?”  
“When it’s closed, it will look as if there is no door there, only a straight wall of shelving for books. It has a hidden latch.”  
“Have you many books?”  
“Hundreds. Truth be told, I’m having them build a second bookcase upstairs.”  
He looked down his nose at her. He was lettered, but the never in his life had he met a person who possessed a true library. “I should like to see them.”  
Lydia put her hands on her hips and said, “Albert Swearengen, aside from a piece of cake at my daughter’s birthday, I have never seen you eat. I have begun to expect you exist on little more than coffee, whisky and wee bits of cork from the whiskey bottle.”  
“I just ate a hardboiled egg.”  
“I am so pleased. I will, of course, have you to dinner once the house is finished.”  
“If I could presume, I would prefer luncheon as my evenings are usually filled.”  
“Of course. I take no offense at your presumption. I think the first course should be soupe de la reine.”  
He nodded.   
“Followed by a lovely fillet of trout with fingerling potatoes and roasted carrots with a crisp Riesling to wash it all down.”   
“Ah, but that is my usual repast on every third Tuesday,” he joked. He had no idea what ‘rain’ soup was.  
“Any word from Yankton?”  
“I expect our guest will arrive any day now. Perhaps this evening.”  
“Good. If Claggett failed to register Addy’s change of name, I will walk to Yankton and strangle him.”  
“I feel I am having a deleterious effect upon you, dear lady.”  
Lydia winked at him. “Perhaps you have.”  
He smiled one of his friendlier smiles. “Going to the claim or the house?”  
“House first. After they shim the door, I will be on my way to the claim. Addy and Emma are with Trixie and the foundling.”  
“Should our mutual friend make his presence known, I’ll send Johnny for you forthwith.”  
“Thank you.”  
“Charlie Utter find any sign of Frank in Cheyenne?”  
She shook her head. “No one’s seen him. There was a man, who died at a brothel. People said he had a broken nose. The constabulary had taken a picture of the man in case someone came to claim him. Charlie Utter had a look see, but it wasn’t Frank. He was a breed.”  
“Maybe the Sioux got him. I hear anything, I’ll let you know.”  
“Thank you, Al.”  
“I hear, Mrs. Garret has determined to inter her husband in the camp.”  
“It couldn’t come at more opportune time. You can see his body in the creek from my front porch.”  
“How unappetizing.”  
“To be sure. The funeral will be tomorrow.”  
He gave her a salute and watched her waddle off. Just then, Dan walked out onto the porch. “She’s bigger’en Wu’s ice house.”  
“My back aches just looking at her.” He took a sip of coffee. “Perhaps you should follow her with a net.”  
“Might not be a bad idea, the net I mean, but that’s more Johnny’s line. Wouldn’t be surprised if she don’t squat down like a dirt heathen and pop’em out right at the claim.”  
“And then proceed to her house and shingle the roof.”  
With that Johnny yelled up from the bar, “We got a sit-chi-ation here Al. Wu’s here, came in through the fucking front door.”  
“Bring him up.”  
“You want him to go out and come in the back door” asked Johnny.  
“Bring him the fuck up.”  
“Yes, sir.”  
*****  
Lydia climbed the steps of the front porch. The breeze was cool, a portent of the coming fall. She turned when she heard the voices of men – Seth Bullock and several others were pulling the body of Brom Garret from the stream. She looked across the camp and watched two more digging his grave. She smiled. Garret would be planted well away from Wild Bill, he wouldn’t annoy Bill in death as he did in life. She pulled her key from her pocket.  
“Morning, Lydia,” said Charlie Utter.  
“Right on time,” she smiled. “Coffee?” She held up her thermos.  
“It from the Grand Central?”  
“Sadly, yes.”  
“Then no.” He waved an envelope at her. “You got a letter.”  
“From Boston?” She was overdue for a letter from her mother.  
He shook his head. “Troy Grove.”  
“Must be from Bill’s mama.”  
“Says, L. Hickok.”  
“His brother, Lorenzo. She’s been suffering from dropsy of late.”  
“Hard to lose a son.”  
“Hard to lose a friend.”  
“I saw some fresh flowers on his grave.”  
“We pay him a visit every morning before I get my shooting in. As long as there are flowers blooming, I will bring them.”  
“I go there at night. Often run into Jane.” He smiled. “Still shooting, huh? Not an apple is safe in Deadwood.”  
“Last year’s apples. Their shriveled and mealy. I’m just putting them out of their misery.”  
“New crop for you to murder soon.”  
“Another month.”  
“You hear from Yankton?”  
Lydia shook her head. “Al says Claggett’s bagman is due at any time. Maybe today.”  
“You still planning on making a trip to attend Bill’s trial?”  
She caressed her enormous belly. “Even if I have to walk. I’ll go even if I am not called to testify.”  
“Bringing Addy and Emma with you?”  
“Of course. Messrs. Bullock and Starr will see to my claim.” She gave him a hard look. He had crossed the line with her yesterday. “I would have asked you, Charlie, but you’re so often in Cheyenne.”  
“And I ain’t no miner.” He paused.  
Damnation! Lydia screamed inside her head.  
“What if she goes?”  
“You cannot help yourself,” said Lydia. “We discussed this yesterday.”  
“She’s his true wife.”  
“The marriage was a farce. He was ossified drunk, the marriage license a fraud. You cannot lie on a marriage license. She shaved years off her age and added them to his. A first year law student could have secured an annulment, not a divorce, an annulment. A valid marriage never took place.”  
“I don’t want to argue again,” began Charlie. His voice was weary. He ached for Wild Bill’s loss.  
“Then don’t bring it up again.” She touched his arm. “I thank you and Mr. Bullock for all your hard effort in bringing Jack McCall to justice. I will see it done.”  
“Alright. If you’re set.”  
“I am.” She looked at the envelope. She sat down on a wooden box, opened it and read it aloud.  
My dearest sister Lydia,  
My mother is feeling poorly – her eyes are not what they once were – and she has asked me to put pen to paper. This letter will accompany a second, sealed and already in my pocket, bound for the prosecutor’s office in Yankton. I will attend the trial as well, and will join you in representing our family.   
On behalf of our entire family, I offer to you our deepest gratitude for seeing our beloved, James Butler, was laid to rest good and proper. The newspapermen, who once spilled gallons of ink inflating the reputation of Wild Bill Hickok and now spill gallons deflating it, have been wretched and thick on our doorstep like flies on a dead cow. At first, we were cordial, but found our words turned against us and James despite our helpfulness. But in receiving your letter, we now know the full truth of James’ death – he did not die alone on the dirty floor of a saloon, but in your loving embrace. It gave my mother great comfort to know he had a proper burial with a minister speaking words of comfort to you and those assembled. This news has allowed us all to bear his horrible death a little easier.  
Please convey to Mr. Charlie Utter, Jane Cannary, Mr. Seth Bullock and his partner, Mr. Starr, our heartfelt gratitude for the friendship each conveyed to our dear, James Butler. And to Messrs. Utter and Bullock our special thanks for their role in the apprehension of the scoundrel known as Jack McCall.  
It is no secret to any of us of the abiding affection you and James had one to another. He truly loved you and had circumstances been different, you would bear the proud moniker of Mrs. James Butler Hickok. You would be the mother of his children, his helpmate, and the mistress of his home. He wrote often to my mother, my sisters and to me and spoke of his great love for you. Though your refusal broke his heart, his love for you never died. It smoldered, but never extinguished and reignited with the hottest and bluest of flames in Cheyenne, when he remade your acquaintance. In his last letter to us from Cheyenne, he wrote, “I have found her! Dear God, I have found her once again and I shall let no impediment come between us ever again. No law of man will keep me from her”.  
I have received no word from Agnes Thatcher Lake that she or her representative will travel to Yankton for the trial. Indeed, we have not received any communication from her full stop, not a letter nor a telegram despite our correspondence to her. Her previous communications with us have been spotty at best. But what she lacks in alacrity, she more than makes up for in insincere familiarity. Without invitation nor introduction, she calls my mother her mother! While she does not speak ill of Agnes, I know it irks my mother to be spoken to in such familiar terms by a woman she has never met nor may she ever meet.  
I am concerned she is not what she seems. Though she claims to be well educated and speaks several languages, her letters are filled with the errors of spelling and grammar common to a six year old. Addy’s letters at three were better drafted. She begs our forgiveness for these transgressions, and blames her misspellings and lack of effort on dropsy. She had promised mother a visit, but never arrived due to her daughter being recently delivered of a child. I fear, she will use this marriage and its celebrity to her advantage. Her daughter, Emma, though a woman grown and recently married has now taken to using the Hickok name. It seems America will now have its own Queen Victoria.  
Thank you for graciously sending James Butler’s last photographic portrait. It was a balm. How happy you all looked! While photographs do not often lend themselves to smiles, I could see the dancing in your eyes. It was very different from a photograph taken in Cheyenne shortly before his “marriage” to Agnes. James Butler looked tired, care worn.  
My mother straightened in her chair when I read to her your plans to name your sons James Butler and William Alonzo. My mother grieves for my father and her lost baby each and every day, though both died so many years ago. Her only consolation in all of this is that James Butler was welcomed into Our Lord’s kingdom by my father and the infant, Lorenzo, in his arms.  
I look so forward to seeing you and Addy and meeting Emma. Perhaps, by the time of the trial, I will hold my brother’s and father’s namesakes in my arms and we might take another photograph for my mother. My sisters have been knitting and sewing day and night.   
With heartfelt thanks and our deepest affections, on behalf of our family, I am your brother,  
Lorenzo Butler Hickok  
P.S. We are in receipt of Addy’s lovely letter. She certainly is a child of strong opinion! I suppose she shall spy a slate once we are in Yankton and in short order it will be covered with Mr. Fibonacci’s calculations. As soon as time permits and in consultation with my dear mother, I shall write a second letter addressed only to her. 

“Well.” Charlie could say nothing more. 

“Best we address this door.”

“Best we do.”

*****

Al Swearengen was sitting across the table from E.B. Farnum, between them the bribe list and a series of envelopes. 

“E.B., steal none of this!”

“Gratuitous, hurtful and unnecessary,” returned Farnum before he stuffed a fistful of currency into another envelope.

“I need to look anyone of them in the eye, name what they were paid and know I’m right.”

“Understood.”

Al looked up as two strangers entered the Gem. “Have a chance this could be him.”

The first man, nearly six feet tall, sported a brown tattersall frock coat and trousers, a waistcoat in black velvet with a matching silk cravat also in black. He wore a top hat in a plain brown wool. His sideburns were long and looked moth-eaten. His partner sported a medium gray chalk-striped frock coat, a disreputable bowler atop his greasy black hair. He chewed on a matchstick.

“Name’s Silas Adams. I’m looking for E.B. Farnum,” said the man in brown.

Farnum popped out of his chair. “I’m Mayor E.B. Farnum and this is Albert Swearengen.”

“Silas Adams,” said the man in brown. He pulled an envelope from an inside pocket and handed it to Al. “This is for you, and those you give to me.”

“Pour you and your mute friend a drink,” said Al as he tore open the envelope. Adams wasn’t halfway to the bar, when Al thundered, “Stop! You motherless fucking whores!”

Adams stopped and turned. “Fuck you!”

“Fuck me!” Swearengen was on his feet. “Do you know what’s in this letter?”

“No.”

“No?”

Adams shook his head. “You think you coulda thought of that before you mother-fucked me?”

“A double-crossing cocksucker, that’s Magistrate Claggett.”

“That’s the message you want me to take back to Magistrate Claggett?”

“That’s the gist of it.”

Adams pointed at the envelopes. “I’ll be taken those tonight.”

“You’re putting a time limit on me?” 

“I am.”

Swearengen leaned against the table and took a deep breath. “Pussy and whiskey on the house.”

“I’ll make my own arrangements.” He turned and headed toward the door.

“You forgetting something?”

Adams stopped and looked over his shoulder. “No.”

“Didn’t Claggett give you a letter addressed to Mrs. Lydia Fellowes Newton?”

Adams shook his head. “No.”

“How ‘bout Miss Adeline Williams Hickok?”

Adams shrugged. “I got nothing from Claggett for either lady. I do have a letter from William Proud, Esquire for Mrs. Newton.”

“And pray, who is William Proud, Esquire?”

“He’s to be the counsel for the prosecution. Jack McCall’s trial has been set. Mrs. Newton is to be a witness. We have subpoenas for the rest – a Captain Massie, Thomas Nuttel and a third man, whose name escapes me.”

“Cheating a little girl, the fucking double-crossing cunt,” muttered Dan as he left the Gem to follow Jimmy Irons.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Adams. “What little girl?”

“Wild Bill Hickok’s ward,” explained Swearengen. “He gave her his name. Signed an affidavit to the affect. I know for a fact, Lydia paid Claggett a little extra.”

“How much extra?”

“Two $10 Eagles.”

“Palmed it good and quick did he?”

“He did.”

“Never said a thing about it.” Adams looked like he had a bad taste in his mouth. Cheating someone like Al Swearengen was one thing, cheating a child was off limits for Adams, but clearly not for Claggett. “I’ll look into it.”

“Johnny!”

“Yes, sir?”

“Go find Lydia. House first, claim second.”

“Right boss.”

“Husband working a claim?”

Swearengen smiled. “No, she is. Husband took a swing at their infant, hit the mother and then Wild Bill took the husband to task.”

“So, she’s a widow woman?”

“Maybe. Sioux coulda got’em. At least he ain’t here.”

The more Adams heard, the less he liked it. Claggett was probably fixing to sell the affidavit at auction. The signature of Wild Bill Hickok would be worth something.

“Get something to eat, serve your papers, and come back in an hour. I’ll make the introduction to Mrs. Newton.”

Adams nodded. “Stapleton, the third man’s name is Stapleton.” 

“He’s a shitheel.”

“Great, know where I can find’em?”

“Nuttal owns a saloon down the thoroughfare. The No. 10.”

“Ain’t that where Hickok was shot?”

“The same. Tom should know where you can find the other two.”

“Thanks. I’ll be back in an hour. Come on Hawkeye.”

*****  
An hour later, Adams was back at the Gem.

“Mr. Adams,” E.B. Farnum slithered in through the door. “I hope your room meets your satisfaction.”

“Supposed to be two rooms,” sniffed Adams. He gestured for a second shot.

“Awaiting an audience with Al?”

“Yeah, he sent someone to fetch Lydia Fellowes Newton.”

“Ah, the Widow Hickok!”

“That’s what you call her?”

“That’s what he calls her when she ain’t around to hear it.”

“I see.”

“Force of nature that woman.”

Adams turned and looked at the barkeep. “You don’t say. How come she’s raising up Hickok’s ward?”

“Child’s a prodigy. Lydia went to college. Guess her shitheel of a husband did, too.”

“And she’s mining the claim.”

“Dan’s seen her in action. Amazing he said. Never saw no one, not man nor woman, who works harder and faster. Ain’t that true, Ellsworth?”

“Tis. Got a claim near’n hers. Walk her back to the Grand Central some days. That woman has the strength of ten. Get tired looking at her.”

“How’s your luck been?” asked Adams.

Ellsworth shrugged, “Well enough to keep me in food, pussy and whiskey.”

“Just not soap,” whispered Hawkeye.

“You say something, son?”

Hawkeye shook his head. “Naw, just telling him I’m about to reconnoiter the camp.”

“Can I buy you a drink, Ellsworth?” asked Adams, trying to diffuse the situation.

“Sure.”

“A shot of your best for Mr. Ellsworth.”

“Thanks, son.”

“Young Adams,” Swearengen bellowed from the balcony. “I will see you in my chambers.”

Adams downed his whiskey and headed up the stairs. He paused at the landing to let a pretty blonde sporting woman pass.

“Come, let us converse and await Lydia’s arrival. Did you succeed in finding the others?”

“I did. You got some view from up here. Whose house is that?”

“Up the bluff? That’ll be Lydia’s. Hope they finish soon. Can’t imagine…”

“Who is that?” There was awe in Silas Adams’s voice.

“That would be Lydia.”

“She’s a real beauty.”

“Wait til she comes past the wagon.”

“Oh dear, God.”

“More to love!”

“I guess so.”

“Doc confirms it is twins.”

“Shouldn’t she be in bed?”

“Let me tell you her schedule today. Up at 5:30. Breakfast at 6. Goes to the market and buys a dozen apples. Visits Wild Bill’s grave. Traipses down to the end of town and places the apples on various structures and then murders them. Shoots them to pieces like Wild Bill taught her. She’s an excellent shot. Then, she stops to supervise the construction of her home, though one day I watched her scoot up a ladder like a monkey and hang those shutters. Then, she puts in a full day at the claim, the whole time chattering in ancient Greek to her daughter, Addy.”

“The prodigy.”

“The same. Has an infant daughter, Emma.”

“Jesus.”

“Feeds ‘em dinner. Baths them and herself, washes out their clothes, does the mending and reads for an hour.”

“Fuck, I’m exhausted.”

“She makes the rest of us look bad.”

“Evening, Al. You must be Mr. Adams,” Lydia smiled up to the balcony. 

“I am.”

“Safe for me to bring Addy through?” She had her hand on her daughter’s shoulder.

“Safe enough.”

“We shall avert our eyes. Richardson!”

Farnum’s creature came out onto the street. Lydia said something to him and he wheeled baby Emma into the Grand Central.


	16. Chapter 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lydia welcomes William Alonzo and James Butler into the world and Doc Cochran is assisted at the delivery by two surprising nurses.

“Dan, we’re coming through.”

“One, two, three…” Addy had memorized the number of steps from the front door to the stairs. Eyes closed, mother and daughter strode and waddled their way across the crowded bawdy house. Addy stuck out her hand. “Got the bannister. Up three, turn left.”

“I’m right behind you.”

“Twelve steps to the landing.” She started counting off.

“What in the hell?” whispered Silas Adams.

“The prodigy has it all worked out. How many steps from door to door. Dan makes sure none of the hoople heads sticks out a foot. The child and her mother get safely to the top of the stairs and my action isn’t encumbered. Often, they leave not whence they came but via the balcony down the stairs and into the domain of the Fourth Estate often encumbered by essays on mathematics, reviews of prominent books, recipes, homekeeping tips, and the weekly crossword.”

“The child writes the crossword?”

“Mother. The child writes the pieces on mathematics and the occasional book review. No one, I believe has actually finished one of Lydia’s puzzles. We all eagerly await the solution in the following week’s paper.”

“Really? That hard, huh.”

“Any idea the synonym for cicatrix?”

“No.”

“Pismire?”

“No.”

“The Botswanan word for water buffalo?”

“Hell, no.”

Eyes still closed, the little girl stuck out her hand. “Penny for the cuss jar, sir.”

Silas smiled. He looked at Lydia, she winked. “She’s saving for the complete series of Horatio Hornblower.”

“You don’t say,” he slid a penny into the girl’s small, white hand. “Name’s Silas Adams.”

Lydia stuck out her hand. “Ah, the illustrious bagman from Yankton. Lydia Newton.”

“Pleasure’s mine ma’am.”

“Do come in Lydia,” smiled Al. “Your chair.”

“It’s been reinforced,” smiled Lydia.

Silas shook his head.

“And what say, Doc Cochran?”

“Any day now.”

“Not in the next ten minutes I hope.”

“Don’t think so, but ask me again in an hour.” 

Al turned to Addy. “You finish reading the Doc’s medical book?”

“Passed my last examination yesterday.” She looked at Silas and pointed to her mother’s enormous abdomen. “It’s the study of obstetrics.”

“Practical knowledge all things considered,” said Silas. The child was starting to make him nervous.

Lydia pivoted to look at the bagman. “I believe you have a letter for me.”

“I do ma’am and you’re gonna want to read it, but Al, Mr. Swearengen, mentioned a form you completed with Magistrate Claggett…”

“Isn’t that why you’re here?”

“No ma’am. I haven’t seen Magistrate Claggett to speak to in about a month. I bear you a subpoena to appear before the court of Judge Grenville G. Bennett in the case of Jack McCall.” He pulled the subpoena from his breast pocket and handed it to her.

At first, she looked at it as if it were a snake. Then, she opened it and read. “Thank you for this, Mr. Adams.”

“Silas.”

“Thank you, Silas. You say you have not had the opportunity to speak with Mr. Claggett?

“I see he got a demotion.”

“He’ll get more than that from me, Silas.” She nearly spit when she said his name. With great difficulty she rose to her feet. “Listen to me Mr. Adams, Silas, and listen well. Last month, Mr. Claggett departed Deadwood after suborning perjury at the farce of a hearing at which he presided. In the week following, an article appeared in Denver Post concerning an auction of letters penned by President Lincoln and others. The article continued to discuss the high prices, astronomical really, the letters and mere signatures of famous people demand in the auction houses of New York and Boston.” Her voice continued to rise to the point of hysteria. “I dare say, outside of General Grant, no one is better known in the Frontier West than James Butler Hickok.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Al watched in silent amusement.

“If that…if that…If that cocksucker believes he will vend that document and deny my daughter and Wild Bill Hickok their mutual and rightful desire for her to bear his last name, I shall strangle him with my bare hands.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I shall gut him like a fish and when I’m done, I’ll throw him over my own shoulder and carry him to Wu’s pigs.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Addy started to weep, large choking sobs. “It’s like he was shot all over again,” she wailed.

“This is what Mr. Claggett has wrought with his avarice.” She wrung her hands. “I have a second copy!”

“Does it bear his wax seal?”

She shook her head.

“Can’t say if it’ll fly or not,” said Silas, “but if it was signed, legal, I’ll take it ‘round til I find a clerk who will file it.”

“How much?”

“No charge. Should I see Claggett, I’ll settle up.” He bent down, pulling out his handkerchief as he went. “Don’t cry, Addy. Breaks my heart to hear you cry.”

“Please, sir, in my heart, I’m Addy Hickok.” She flew into his arms and buried her small face in his neck. For good measure, she sobbed a few minutes more and Adams could feel his collar go wet.

“Thank you for your time and attention, Silas,” said Lydia, in a voice quieter than her normal speaking voice and certainly quieter than it was minutes earlier. “I apologize for my volume and my vulgarity. That was unlike me.”

“You were vexed, ma’am.”

“I certainly was. When do you believe the trial will start?”

“October, ma’am.”

“My name is Lydia. By October, my sons should be born.”

“Will you leave’em here with a wet nurse?”

“Heavens no. We shall travel en famille. I have a fifteen month old daughter as well. Her name is Emma.”

“That’s a pretty name. I’ll make arrangements for a wagon. I’ll come up here myself and fetch you.”

“We’d be most obliged. Thank you.” She turned to Swearengen, the beginnings of a smile at the corner of her mouth. “You have been a terrible influence on me. Cocksucker.” She shook her head.

“Mama, I think I may need to charge you double,” said Addy wiping her eyes.

“I’ll give you a dollar when we return to the Grand Central. You must never tell your grandmother I uttered that epithet.”

“She probably faint before you got to the sucker part.”

“I’m taking back fifty cents.” She gave her daughter a look. “Let’s go, I must turn in my crossword to Mr. Merrick.”

“What’s the hardest clue in this week’s effort?” Swearengen picked up his pen.

“I thought it up,” smiled Addy. “Amalgest mathematician.”

“Shit.”

“It’s Ptolemy. With a P.”

“With a P?”

The little girl sighed. “Oh all right, it’s P-T-O-L-E-M-Y.”

“What’s the second hardest?”

“Amaroidal.”

“Is the down from the P in Ptolemy, pismire.”

“I’m not telling.” She followed her mother out the door and across the balcony, her eyes shielded from the debauchery below.

Dan walked into Al’s office. “It’s gonna be something short, boss. Pismire’s an ant. Cicatrix is a scar.” He poured himself a shot glass of whiskey and made a hand gesture that said, don’t ask me til I’ve had this. “E.B.’s in a faint. He swears he heard Lydia say the word cocksucker. I was out back.”

“She did. Claggett pocketed the affidavit allowing us all to call the child Addy Hickok. Lydia thinks he’s gonna sell it at auction back east.”

“Cocksucker. She hit is right on the nose.”

“Magistrate Claggett is a cocksucker,” agreed Silas Adams.

“You find the other one?”

“He and Jimmy Irons are having a time of it in the bathhouse. Johnny’s there with’em now.”

“Relieve him. Adams and I have something to discuss.”

*****

“I thought you were leaving this evening,” said Lydia to Silas as she watched him climb the stairs. She was walking the floor with a still teething Emma.

“This here’s Hawkeye.”

“Ma’am,” he tipped his disreputable looking bowler.

“I’m tired. Wanna sleep in a real bed for a change.”

“And this was the best we could do,” joked Hawkeye.

“I can’t wait ‘til my house is finished. Should be done by the end of the week. My bed is singing the siren’s song. Let me get the paper. Shouldn’t be but a moment.”

“She’s awful pretty,” whispered Hawkeye. “Big as a house, but a right pretty face.”

“Truly. Claggett fucked her over.”

“Claggett did that!”

“I didn’t say he fucked her, I said he fucked her over. Affidavit to change her daughter Addy’s name to Hickok. He was the child’s godfather. Now, she’s an orphan.”

“Claggett took her money?”

“She gave him two silver Eagles, $20.”

“Hell, don’t cost more’n a dollar to…”

“I know. Now, he’s gotta paper with Wild Bill Hickok’s signature. Can fetch a big price back east.”

“Shitheel.”

“Swearengen said the little girl was his ward, she’s the daughter of the deputy he killed in Abilene. Claggett will weave some story that she’s the illicit child of Hickok and Lydia to boost the price.”

“Cocksucker.”

The door to Lydia’s room opened. She held up crossed fingers. “I hope Emma stays down for the night. Haven’t gotten a decent sleep in five days.” She tilted her head to the side. “Have you been to the barber, Silas?”

“Al gave me a dose of sartorial advice. You clean up pretty good, too. That’s a pretty dress.”

“Thank you.” She handed him an envelope. “Are you sure you won’t take payment?”

“Like I told you, Claggett will be the one paying me.”

“Heard what he did, ma’am,” added Hawkeye. “Ain’t right.”

“No, it isn’t. If it can’t be put right, I don’t know.” She turned and looked at the door to her room. “Addy will be broken hearted.”

The next morning, Silas and Hawkeye stood as Lydia, Emma and Addy entered the dining room. “Morning.”

“Morning, Silas, Hawkeye. Have you met Mr. Seth Bullock?” 

“Can’t say I have.”

“You the man in from Yankton?” bit out Bullock. Bullock looked like he’d bite Adams’s head off.

“I’m the man who’s gonna make right what the other man from Yankton did.”

“I see. Sol Starr.”

“Pleased to meet you. Silas Adams. This here’s Hawkeye.”

“Heading out to your claim?”

“Yes, then the house. I’m starting to feel uncomfortable. The end, blessedly, is nigh. Maybe tomorrow.”

“Al says you’re thinking it may be boys.”

“Sparring partners,” joked Lydia. She took a sip of coffee. “Oh this is horrible. With any luck, Charlie Utter will have my coffee pot in one the crates he brings today.”

“How many more shipments?”

“One.”

“The books are here,” said Addy, her face aglow.

“You get that fifty cent piece from your mama?” asked Silas as he ran his toast through the bacon grease.

“She gave me the whole dollar. I negotiated – fifty cents for the cuss word and fifty to keep my mouth shut in front of grandma.”

Silas winked at her.

“Well, no rest for the wicked. Come girls, there’s a pick axe calling my name.”

“She ain’t serious?” asked Hawkeye.

“Fraid she is,” smirked Starr. “Swings one better’n most men.”

For the better part of the next hour, they ate in silence.

“When you back in Deadwood?” asked Seth as Silas stood and put on his hat.

Silas picked up his port manteaux. “Next week, next month, whenever he sends me.”

“Heard what he did to Addy,” said Bullock.

“I plan on taking care of that. Near broke my heart to hear her cry. Be seeing you.”

Hawkeye tipped his hat.

They were half-way to the livery, when they ran into Addy. Better said, she ran into them. “Come quick, it’s mama! She can’t walk for the pain.”

“Where?”

“This way!” She took Silas by the hand. They found Lydia have slumped over a tree stump, people milling past her and paying no mind.

“My water broke! Oh, I’m so shamed. It looks like I’ve wet myself.”

“It’s just amniotic fluid, mama. Amniotic fluid or liquour aminii is composed of mostly water, but also proteins, carbohydrates, and lipids. It helps the baby to grow, so don’t be embarrassed, you didn’t wet yourself like Emma. Silas, could you bring mama to the hotel? I’m gonna fetch Doc Cochran.” She picked up her sister and was off like a shot.

He handed Hawkeye his bag to Hawkeye and lifted Lydia into his arms. Despite her enormous belly she was a tiny thing. She bit her knuckles.

“You in a lotta pain?”

She nodded. “It was so different last time. A twinge, another, then quicker and more painful. This just hit me all at once.”

“Is it her time?” a male voice yelled.

“Sure is, Zeke,” whimpered Lydia.

“Give’em hell, Lydia,” hollered another toothless prospector. “I’ll go sit by your claim, make sure no one takes a nugget.”

“You’re a blessing, Jim.”

“I think your daughter may know more than the doc,” joked Silas as he double stepped down the muddy thoroughfare.

“Well, I hope what he lacks in book learning, he more than makes up for in clinical experience.”

“He in the war?”

“I believe so.”

“He knows about cutting off legs, ma’am.”

“I’m afraid, you’re right, but he was damn good when the smallpox hit.”

“Thank goodness, also he’s got Addy to set him right.”

“She’s a bit of a fainter when it comes to blood.”

“There’s always a first time. Coming through, Farnum give me the fucking key to her room. Bring up some hot water’n towels.”

“Oh dear, oh my.” The hotelier started to cluck like a chicken. “Where’s Addy and baby, Emma?” 

“Fetchin’ Doc Cochran. I said give me the damn key!”

Farnum finally muster the strength to hand over the iron key. He turned to his familiar and shouted, “Richardson, fetch the gimp!”

Adams bounded up the stairs, Lydia whimpering like a small child. He managed to turn the lock without having to put her down. Once again, she swallowed her knuckles to the first joint.

“Shit, Lydia. You wanna holler, holler. My ears’ll recover.”

With that she threw back her head and screamed bloody murder.

“Here let me put you on the bed.”

“No, no,” she shook her head. “I need to get these off.” He put her down and she held onto the wall until she disappeared behind the screen. Silas watched as she threw her maternity shirtwaist over the screen and raise her hands above the head to put on the clean shift. “Oh no, no.”

“What’s wrong?”

“I can’t get off the boots!” she wailed.

He helped her from behind the screen. She stopped for a minute, holding onto the iron footboard and panting like a dog. She sat down on the edge of the bed and he pulled off the large wading boots and put them to one side. “Don’t think you’ll be needing these either.” He pulled on the leg of her bloomers. 

Lydia flushed scarlet. “I guess not.”

He put his hand between her shoulder blades and lowered her onto the bed. “Doc’ll be here soon.”

“What’s taking so long?”

“Seems longer to us, but it’s only been a few minutes.”

“He could be out on rounds.”

“Could,” Silas said. 

There was a knock at the door. Farum stood on the other side. He held a bucket of steaming water and an armload of towels. “The gimp will be here presently as Trixie is about with the foundling.”

“Well, we gonna have a baby,” rasped Doc Cochran from the doorway.

Addy sighed, “Why do men always say that when they do none of the work?” She poured some of the hot water into the basin and washed her hands.

Silas looked at Lydia. “How old is she?”

“Eight.”

“Small for her age, yet old too.”

“She is.”

“Doc, wash your hands before you touch my mother!” ordered Addy. “We found him making rounds in the most disreputable brothel in the Badlands,” she whispered to her mother. “Hence the need to wash his hands.”

“Bossy little thing,” smiled the Doc.

“Don’t worry, Mr. Adams, Hawkeye didn’t linger there.”

“Good to know.”

“Lydia, I’m gonna ease the coverlet down some. Perhaps, it’s a good time for you to absquatulate, Mr. Adams.”

With that a violent shudder shook Lydia. She grabbed Silas’s hand with such strength, he feared she had broken a bone or two.

“Perhaps, not,” said the Doc. “Just push yourself back.”

Addy’s mouth formed a little “O”. She didn’t speak for near on a minute and Lydia was afraid she would faint. “Mama, you’re crowning.”

“Like Queen Victoria?” she choked out a laugh.

“You’re gonna have to wave like this,” she held her hand aloft, cupped and turned it side to side.

Lydia couldn’t help it. She started to laugh, until it turned into a wail.  
“Push!” Cochran ordered. “Baby’s coming, by God. The shoulders are out! Here he is.” The doctor grabbed the baby by the ankles, turned him upside down and gave him a little spank to the backside. His wails filled the room.

“Give me my baby!” shouted Lydia. She was ferocious.

“Gotta cut the cord first Lydia.”

“I’m gonna do it,” said Addy.

“You sure,” smiled the Doc.

“Yes, sir.”

He handed her the scissors. “Sterilized’em this morning. Two pairs.”

“Good,” whispered Lydia.

“Fine job, Addy.” The doctor wrapped Lydia’s infant son in a towel and placed him in her arms. “Put these aside. Can’t use’em on the second baby.”

“Good morning, William Alonzo,” Lydia smiled. “Welcome to the world.”

“Handsome son,” smiled Silas.

“She makes pretty babies,” smiled Addy. 

“Yeah, I’d say she’s real good at it,” agreed Silas.

“Oh dear,” she handed William to her daughter. His brother was coming and fast.

“It’s almost over,” smiled Cochran. “Starting to see the head. You got time to go,” he said to Adams.

“Ain’t goin’ nowhere. This has been too exciting.”

There was a knock at the door. Addy ran to answer. “It’s Trixie, Jewel and Jane and Jane’s got Emma.”

“Make sure they’re clean,” hollered Doc Cochran in return.

“What the hell’s he doing in there?” shouted Jane.

“Stop shouting! He carried mama from near the livery all the way up the stairs here and just got stuck,” answered Addy.

“And now, I’m systematically crushing every bone in the poor man’s hand,” laughed Lydia. “Oh here it comes.”

“Push now Lydia, push.”

Jewel raised her hand to the back of her face and brushed away a tear. “Here he comes.”

“Another little boy, identical to his brother. Get the second scissors, Addy.”

“I cut the cord,” the daughter said proudly as her brother hollered his welcome to the world.

“Good morning James Butler.”

“Shit, you named him after Wild Bill!” exclaimed Jane.

“And his brother after Bill’s father, who died helping slaves escape on the Underground Railroad.”

“I did not know that about Wild Bill,” mused Adams. “My family did it too in Ohio.”

“Really, my mother was active in the abolitionist cause. Good morning, Emma. Would you like to meet your baby brothers?”

“Babies!” said Emma as clear as day. She clapped her fat little hands. “Babies!”

“Did ya hear that,” smiled Doc Cochran. “She said it as clear as day.”

“She can count to twenty, Doc,” said Addy.

“You don’t say?”

“I just did.”

“It’s a figure of speech, Addy.”

“The only figures I care about are on either side of an equation.”

The doctor rolled his eyes. “Mathematics prodigy,” he murmured to a confused Adams.

“Addy, hand me my purse.”

“I will in a minute, mama. We’re just near finished with William’s bath. Oh no!”

“What’s wrong?”

“She just got baptized,” laughed Trixie. “You got some clothes for this little fellow?”

“Top drawer of the chest on the right.”

“Let me get a weight on him first,” said Doc Cochran. He pulled a small scale from his bag. “Six pounds on the dot. Good healthy weight.” He handed William Alonzo back to Trixie to dress.

“Here’s your purse, mama.” 

“Take Doc Cochran, Silas, and Hawkeye to the Gem and treat’em to a whiskey. Buy yourself a sarsaparilla.”

“I might need two,” the little girl laughed.

“So might the Doc and Mr. Adams.”

After Doc Cochran weighed James Butler, Addy led the parade down the stairs.

“And what pray tell has the stork delivered?” asked Farnum polishing the front desk.

“Two healthy baby boys – William Alonzo and James Butler.” She raised her hands over her head like a prize-fighter after a victory. “I have two brothers!”

There was polite applause from the dining room.

“May I ask, Mr. Adams, were you in the room the entire time?”

“Happened so quick,” Silas shrugged.

Farnum shuddered. “The inhumanity.”

“Ain’t every day a man bears witness to two miracles in under an hour!”

“I suppose it ain’t. Your compatriot awaits outside, Mr. Adams.”

“Hawkeye!” Adams clapped his friend on the back.

“Well?”

“Two boys, identical twins.”

“Shit. How’s she gonna tell one from the other?”

“Mother’s magic,” smiled Adams. “She a she-bear about her babies.”

“I’ll bet.”

“We’re all having a drink on Lydia at the Gem.”

“Even the girl?” Hawkeye asked.

“Yep, she’s having a double sarsaparilla.”

“Hey, Dan!” Addy yelled through the door. “Any one peculiar?”

“No, not as yet.”

She walked up to the bar. “I need three shots of your best whiskey and a large sarsaparilla.” She slapped the money down on the counter. “Then do it again, and keep the change as a tip.”

“So your mama’s done having her babies.”

“Identical twin boys.”

“They got names?” he put the shot glasses on a tray and poured the sarsaparilla. “I see you looking at me. Them glasses are clean.”

“William Alzono was born first. He weighs six pounds. James Butler came second, he weighed six pounds and one ounce.” She jumped off the stool and reached for her glass. A nervous looking man dressed all in black skittered into the Gem. “Guten morgen, Herr Titlichter! Ich habe zwei neue brüder!”

Dan turned purple. “What did you just say to him?”

“I told him I had two baby brothers. I thought he was German!”

“Why?”

“Isn’t Titlichter a German name?”

Al barked a laugh from the balcony and headed back into his office. “German!” he shouted before closing the door.

“Why is Al laughing?”

Dan fumbled for a second then said, “I think Al thought he was Prussian.”

“Prussia has been a part of Germany since 1864,” said Addy. She was as sober as a judge.

“I did not know that,” Dan picked up the tray.

“Oh never mind,” Addy sighed. She followed Dan through the door.

“Now that you’ve helped deliver your brothers, drank a large sarsaparilla, what do you plan to do for the rest of the day?” Doc asked Addy.

“It is true, I’ve had a full morning,” she took a sip. “After I finished my sarsaparilla and take my leave of you, I have mother’s permission to visit with Mr. Merrick and write up the birth announcement. 

“Your brothers are the first children born in the camp,” agreed Doc Cochran.

“That a fact,” said Hawkeye, downing his second shot.

“Then, I will pay a call on Charlie Utter and discern the whereabouts of our last shipment of furniture and books. Perhaps, I’ll visit the house and start making up the beds. As soon as possible, mama wants us to move into our new house.” She pointed to the large house on the bluff.

“Fine looking house,” agreed Hawkeye.

“We have indoor plumbing and a heater for our bath water,” she bragged.

“You don’t say.”

“Heater’s not hooked up yet. And mama has the loveliest towels. Not like the ones in the hotel.” She turned up her nose. “They came from France. They were a gift to her from her Aunt Eugenie at the time of her marriage to Frank Newton.”

“You have a real knack for saying Newton’s name,” smiled Silas.

“I hate him. I know it’s a sin, but he was so hateful to mama. Hurt her so many times. We are lucky to have Emma, William and James amongst us as he beat her first child from her.”

“You don’t say,” Adams’s hand formed into fists.

“I was only three, but I remember the blood on the floor. I don’t know what they were arguing about, probably me, but he struck her and she fell to the floor and then he started to kick her.” She stared off at the horizon. Tears welled up in her eyes. “I thought when Emma came along, he’d just ignore me, but he hated Emma just as much as me. I hope the Sioux got him, because if he comes back…”

“If he comes back, he’ll deal with me,” finished Silas Adams. He fished a clean handkerchief from his pocket. “Here.”

Addy wiped her eyes and straightened her shoulders. “This is a happy day. I banish all thought of Franklin Ellsworth Newton.”

“Good girl,” Doc Cochran clasped her hand.

“I should be going, gentlemen. I have a full day.” In turn, she hugged and kissed each man.

“Remember what I said,” said Silas Adams.

“I will,” she whispered in his hear before turning on her heel and heading for the offices of the Black Hills Pioneer.

“Well, well,” said Hawkeye when she was out of sight. “That cheerful, lovely woman.” He shook his head. “Any one of us be so lucky to have a woman like that…” He downed the few drops that had pooled in the bottom of his shot glass.

“Damn right,” returned Doc Cochran.

“Hey, Doc, what do you think the odds are that Merrick will be able to keep the word gestate out of Addy’s birth announcement?”

The men laughed.

“Slim and none,” answered Cochran as he struggled to his feet.

“Wonder if she’ll recite for him the chemical composition of amni…What was it she said?” Hawkeye dusted off his hat.

“Amniotic fluid?” Cochran barked another laugh.

“That’s it!” smiled Hawkeye.

“Hey, Doc, what the fuck is a lipid?” asked Adams.

“Lipid is another word for fat.”

“Did you hear her talking German talk to the Tit Licker?” added Dan.

“Why she do that?” asked Cochran.

“The Tit Licker’s a specialty act, first customer of the morning. Hell don’t know if anyone knows his name,” Dan explained to Adams and Hawkeye. “She got his name wrong, calls him Herr Titlichter and thinks he’s Germanfolk. Al near’n pissed himself with laughter.”

“That is funny,” laughed Cochran.

“You fellas have a safe trip to Yankton. None of that better go missing.”

“It won’t,” assured Adams. “I have a bone to pick with Claggett.”

“You tell the good magistrate he can go fuck hisself.”

Adams smiled, “I will.” He got on his horse and he and Hawkeye headed south. He could feel Lydia’s copy of the adoption document in his pocket.


	17. Chapter 17

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Al discovers Addy has been writing unauthorized biographies of some of Deadwood's residents and Merrick sees the real Addy.

“You ain’t sneaking up to the claim,” shouted Al Swearengen from his perch. “You should be in bed.”

“No, I shall forego the claim today. But I wanted to take the air. Farnum has us within sniffing distance of the privy and they’re digging a new hole.”

Al screwed up his face. “I would have thought he’d move you to better quarters?”

She shrugged. “It’s the biggest room he has. Traded one for the other.”

“I see. I’ll be right down to see my godsons. Rumor has it you make fine looking babies.”

“I can confirm the rumor to be true.”

“Mrs. Newton, shouldn’t you be in bed?”

“I don’t have the plague, Mr. Merrick. And my name is Lydia. Mrs. Newton is my mother-in-law.”

“She has in the constitution of a pack mule, Merrick.” Al peeked in the carriage. “Two healthy boys.” 

“Mr. Hickok would have loved them,” said Merrick. “Pains me he didn’t live to see them, he spoke so often of their coming arrival.”

Lydia’s eyes filled with tears. “Oh don’t pay me any mind, I’ve been doing this all day. If I’m like I was with Emma, tomorrow as well. Women always cry afterwards, but I was just had the same thought. James Butler Hickok loved children and these little ones in particular.

“I have a humorous story, courtesy of your daughter, to put you right,” smiled Swearengen. “She spoke in German to my specialty act the Tit Licker.”

“She did what?” Merrick was horrified.

“Despite my best efforts, Addy has been more than a little bored in Deadwood. She’s taken to writing fictitious backstories for several of Deadwood’s residents. The Tit Licker is now Herr TitLICTHER,” she overemphasized the name. “Born in Dresden, he is the scion of a one of Dresden’s most important families, his father is the chairman of Dresden’s gold guild. He is here to buy gold to send to his father, who will make crowns for the new German Kaiser.”

“That’s hilarious,” said Merrick.

“She did say something that sounded like brother,” added Al.

“Perhaps brüder, she was probably telling him she had two new brothers.”

Al Swearengen laughed. “Who else has gotten this treatment?”

“Tom Nuttal was born on a pecan plantation in South Carolina.”

“Hence his name,” laughed Merrick.

“He is the second son, and he’s in Deadwood, because his cruel, elder brother sold the family plantation and he is trying to raise funds to buy it back. The reason the brother was forced to sell is that Tom absconded with the family’s secret recipe for pecan pie. Their fortunes were lost without that recipe, which she has named Tom’s Revenge.”

Al shook his head. “Tom’d get a kick outta that.”

“Sol Star’s father was the most famous baritone in all of Vienna, but because he was a Jew, he was not allowed to sing at Vienna’s famed opera house. He became the chief cantor of Vienna’s largest synagogue and an enterprising restauranteur in an establishment next to the house of worship would charge extra for his outside tables on Friday nights, Saturday mornings, weddings and any other time the Marcus Star would sing. All of the men who had denied Marcus the right to sing with the opera met with misfortune – one fell from a ladder and forever walked with a limp, one had a wife who no longer loved him, and the third who was the meanest of the three had his favorite dog stolen by gypsies and given to the Emperor to forgive a debt. So he would see the dog every day, but could never ask for its return.”

“Wow.” 

“I saved the best for last. Jewel. Addy thinks that Jewel is a noblewoman from Poland, Maria-Eudoxia Bielski of the House of Jelita. Maria-Eudoxia is the youngest and most beautiful daughter of her wealthy noble family. One day, Maria-Eudoxia’s parents invite Crown Prince Alfred of Liechtenstein to their castle with the hopes of encouraging him to marry their eldest daughter, Josephina. But Josephina was mean and ugly and of course the young prince became smitten with her younger, fairer sister. Well, Josephina became so angry at the thought of the prince marrying her sister, she ran far into the woods, ran and ran until she found herself in front of a strange little cottage. Inside the cottage was a peculiar old woman, far uglier than even Josephina. When she heard Josephina’s tale, she became enraged for she too had been the eldest, ugliest daughter of a Polish prince, was spurned and now lived in the dark woods as a witch. Josephina asked the witch for two spells – the first, a love potion to make Alfred fall madly in love with her. She insisted on a second, to make Maria-Eudoxia an ugly old crone and to die before her time. Well, the witch thought asking for two potions was selfish and instead of making Maria-Eudoxia ugly, she continued to be beautiful but walked with a horrible limp. She was banished from her family home and sent to America.”

“She tell this story to Jewel?” Al smiled. 

Lydia shook her head. “Not yet, she’s still working on it.”

“It’s quite a story. She possesses a powerful imagination. I wonder, I wonder if I can coax her to write a short story for the newspaper?”

“I’m sure she’d love to. I’ll ask.”

“The birth announcement will be in tomorrow’s paper. And since you are here,” he pulled his ever present notebook from his breast pocket, “Perhaps a quote?”

“I am profoundly grateful to all the residents of the Deadwood Camp, who have helped me in ways large and small since my arrival. Their kindnesses have been a blessing to me and my family. I am grateful to God that I was delivered of two healthy little boys and will do all in my power to raise them up to be fine young men.”

“That’s lovely Lydia. Thank you,” Merrick folded the notebook and returned it to his pocket.

“We have a betting pool going at the Gem. How long did it take you, Merrick, to talk the prodigy out of her insistence that the word gestate or any one of its derivatives remained in the birth announcement?”

Lydia turned red-faced. “She didn’t, did she?”

“Ten minutes.”

“Dan wins. I believed your powers of persuasion were far more muscular, Merrick. I thought you’d do it in seven.”

The newspaperman shrugged. “She was very insistent.”

“What about amniotic fluid?” asked Lydia.

“I’m not sure I know what that is,” answered Merrick.

“Thank God. Al, if things are going as well at the house as I expect, could I borrow the sledge to transport my trunk and the crib from the Grand Central to the house?”

“Absolutely. I shall miss our early morning chats.”

“I shall as well.”

With that a disembodied hand tossed a piss pot out of a window of the Grand Central. 

“William, James, welcome to Deadwood,” said Swearengen, who turned on his heel and walked back into his saloon.

“I’m sorry you had to witness that, Lydia,” said Merrick.

Lydia shrugged. “Same welcome I got!” She threw back her head and laughed.

“May I escort you to your new home?”

“That would be most kind.”

*****  
Addy was sitting at the kitchen table, face down.

“Addy are you alright?” said Lydia rushing to her eldest daughter.

“I’ve been working as hard as you work at the claim.”

“I’m thankful.”

“Charlie Utter helped me with the beds. I hope you like how I’ve arranged your room. The bed is a little off center, so there would be room for the baby’s cots. Beds are all made, save for the one in the guest bedroom as I couldn’t find the box with the linens for that bed. I unpacked, dusted and shelved six boxes of books, the crockery is washed and I was just taking a little rest. I’m powerful hungry, too.”

“I brought some sandwiches. You’ve done a wonderful job, Addy. I’m so proud of you.”

“Charlie needs help with the piano. He’ll be back tomorrow.”

“I cannot believe how much you’ve accomplished Addy,” added Merrick. “It’s looking less like a house and more like a home.”

The little girl beamed. “Where’s Emma?”

“With Trixie. She’s taking her afternoon nap.”

“I know you wanted to be in the house when the babies were born, but I was afraid Mr. Garret would still be in the stream. That would be a bad omen.”

“I didn’t know you saw him.”

“Couldn’t help it,” said Addy. “Did you know Doc Cochran engages in vivisection?”

“No, I did not.”

“Looking down at Mr. Garret, I could understand how someone with a scientific mind could be sorely tempted.”

Lydia’s eyes widened. “Truly?”

“Well, say Mr. Garret had died of a rare disease instead of having two left feet in fancy shoes, couldn’t studying his earthly remains unlock the terrible secret of his disease?”

“You raise a very good point, Addy.”

“Is this your typical luncheon conversation?”

Addy smiled and nodded. “I’m afraid it is.”

“Mr. Merrick has a proposition for you,” said Lydia sliding a sandwich under her daughter’s nose.

“What kind of proposition?” Addy took an enormous bite of sandwich. More than most eight year olds, she relished a good negotiation.

“Well, you’ve been so kind to write columns on mathematics and important books, but I wonder if you’d like to take a turn with a short work of fiction?”

She considered his offer while she chewed. “I’d still be writing about mathematicians?”

“Of course.” Lydia put a plate in front of him. “Thank you, Lydia. This sandwich looks most appetizing.”

“I’m nearly done with a short piece on Copernicus. It’s are real barnburner.”

“I’ll bet it is, Addy.”

“Many people credit Galileo with the theory the earth revolves around the sun, but it was Copernicus. The publication of Copernicus’s De revolutionibus, in which he argues in favor of the heliocentric theory of the planets marks the beginning of the scientific revolution. Mama, how far is Krakow from Berlin?”

“I don’t know.”

“I think I would like to visit Krakow – to walk the streets Copernicus walked. Perhaps attend a lecture at Jagiellonian University.”

“And you are planning a trip to Berlin?”

“Once I complete my undergraduate studies in mathematics, I plan to matriculate at the University of Berlin. Some of the finest minds in mathematics teach there.”

“I see. Do they take women students in Berlin?”

“They will when I’m ready to go. They will not refuse me.”

“I dare say they shouldn’t. Someone told me they heard you speaking German just this morning.”

“I’ve started studying German now, with the hopes I will be fluent when I arrive in Berlin. I cannot hope to be taken seriously if I cannot publish at least one of my theorems in German.”

“I see.”

“And the lectures must be given in German as well.”

“You will be busy,” Merrick took a sip of coffee. 

“I am now,” the little girl sighed. “The declensions are miserable.”

Merrick was having a hard time keeping a straight face. “I expect they must be.”

“How many languages do you speak, Mr. Merrick?”

“Well, I don’t really speak anything but English. I did study ancient Greek and Latin when I was in school.”

“Isn’t Homer marvelous?”

“Yes, he is.”

“I speak Italian, French, German, and of course English. I can read Latin and Greek, but only speak them in jest with mama as they are dead languages. I was thinking for my next book review, I would write about Mr. Longfellow’s translation of Dante’s Inferno. But I understand there are several translations in British English and I may wish to read those before putting pen to paper.”

“That seems wise,” said Merrick. “What theorem are you studying this week?”

“The Irrationality of the Square Root of Two. Pythagoras.”

“I believe I am more familiar with his theorem about the sides of a triangle.”

Addy jumped down from her chair and went to the desk for a sheet of paper. “Here it is in its simplicity. That’s what I like best about mathematics.” She started to write, the tip of her tongue peeking through her lips as it always did when she was deep in concentration. “One of the greatest gifts given to us by the Pythagorean School of Greek Mathematics was the discovery of irrational numbers.”

“I see.”

“Take the square root of the number two. It looks like this,” and she started to scribble away. “In the end, any root of any natural number which is not the square of a natural number is irrational.”

“I see.” He really didn’t.

“This theorem is from the book my Uncle Bill gave me on my last birthday.”

“He was so proud of you, Addy. I was telling your mother earlier how much he would have loved your new brothers.

Addy looked at the carriage. Her eyes teared. “Mama, when we were having our little celebration, I happened to tell Mr. Adams about the other baby, the one who died.”

“Oh Addy!”

“It’s because I am so grateful for Emma, William and James. He said, you need never worry about Frank Newton. He’ll deal with Frank, he gave me his pledge…and his handkerchief to wipe my eyes.”

“That was very gallant of him,” said Merrick.

“Oh, E.W. you don’t know the half of it. The poor man not only carried me up the stairs, I was so far along he was stuck in the room with me.”

“Perhaps, he feels like the Chinese do. In China, if you save a man’s life, you are forever responsible,” added E.W. Merrick.

“And he said he witnessed two miracles in one morning and a man couldn’t ask more in life than that,” said Addy.

“And his friend, Hawkeye?”

“For the life of me, mama, I don’t rightly know his Christian or surname. I had no idea at the condition of some of the saloons in the Badlands, and…”

“You were in the Badlands?” asked Merrick, horrified.

“With Hawkeye to find Doc Cochran. Some poor sporting woman had a broken arm. Doc had just set it when we arrived.” She looked E.W. Merrick long and hard in the face. “After what I saw today, those poor women,” Addy shook her head, “I am more determined than ever to be the greatest mathematician the world has ever known and I will find other women and girls who possess the same ache I have for learning and I will pull them forward with me. I will not walk through the door alone, but in the company of every woman and girl I can find. I’m not like other eight year old girls. I may not understand the particulars of what these women do to earn their bread and keep, but I know enough. I see the hard lines of unhappiness etched in their faces and their souls. I see the hopelessness in their eyes that comes from knowing their only path in life is working in a bawdy house, because they are unlettered. And I know had it not been for my Uncle Bill and my Mama, I might face that same fate.”

“Addy,” began E.W. Merrick.

“You don’t think so? Frank Newton threatened to sell me to a bawdy house.”

“Is this true?” Merrick looked at Lydia.

“Yes. Addy’s mother was a good Christian woman, but he called her a whore and said what was good enough for the mother was good enough for her child. Then, he became agitated Emma wished to nurse and balled up his fist and took a swing at Emma. I covered her with my body and Frank split my lip. Wild Bill beat him into unconsciousness and sent him to Cheyenne or to hell.”

“Oh the devil wouldn’t even want Frank Newton,” spat Addy.

“I had heard rumors.”

“As I said, save for Wild Bill Hickok and Lydia Fellowes Newton, who would be in agony at the thought, I am not working in the Badlands, because the sporting woman with the broken arm was a twelve-year-old girl.”

“Oh dear God,” whispered Lydia.


	18. Chapter 18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The General Crook and Magistrate Claggett come to the camp. Lydia witnesses Seth Bullock administer swift justice to Alma's father, Otis Russell, and discovers Cy Tolliver's plot to takeover China Alley.

It had been a hot summer. The heat begat flies, vermin and small pox like a chapter in the Book of Exodus – the KAV, the King Al Version. The birth of the Newton twins, who should have rightly been surnamed Hickok as they bore the proud given names of Wild Bill and his abolitionist father as well as his blond luxurious hair, had ushered in the fall. The evenings were cool and this fall morning downright chilly. This brisk morning, Al Swearengen stood on his balcony, a steaming china cup in hand. He contemplated turning up his collar for warmth, but decided against it.

He turned to his right, hearing them before he saw them, a company of the saddest looking cavalry he had ever seen. He wondered whence the last time they had been visited by the quartermaster and he figured no time recently. He hated taking payment for services rendered in USA-issued irons. He had before and he clearly would again, but it didn’t mean he’d like it. He surveyed the lot. The pussy corner would do a brisk business, blow jobs a distant second, but a $7 ass fucking was simply out of the question. 

Al was heartened Lydia and her brood were safely ensconced in the house on the hill. There was nothing worse for a woman – God-fearing or whore – than a soldier or a sailor, lonely or worse, on leave. And these men looked the worse for wear, one man, still in step twitching like a spastic.

Yesterday, Lydia had fixed Wu and him an opulent luncheon of roasted quail, dressed in a spicy sauce which Wu seemed familiar and he thoroughly enjoyed. Wu brought Lydia a pair of hard-boiled eggs, dyed dark red with the onion skins, to celebrate the one-month anniversary of the birth of the infants. Apparently, it was a long held tradition of the Celestial. Lydia had played the piano for them, Mozart and Bach, rather than the usual Camptown Races that rang in his ears when sleep alluded him.

It was only the second time Al had eaten in a real house, the first time at Lydia’s the week before when he was the sole guest of honor. On that day, they ate the menu she had promised of Queen’s Soup, not rainwater, trout and roasted vegetables. The wine, a crisp white, had flowed. For a moment he wondered what E.B. would do if she ever turned her mind to opening a restaurant…because her days at the claim were done. She, at the insistence of Ellsworth, had sunk a shaft. No longer need she break her back, she could count the tons of gold the earth spewed forth, care for her brood, and call it a day.

On the outside the house was clapped in rough yellow pine just beginning to weather. But on the inside, it was another story. The walls had been insulated with corn husks and plastered. The windows were well-shimmed and caulked against drafts. The rooms were painted a pale yellow in stark contrast to the dark wallpaper of fashionable homes. The furniture was comfortable and homely. Addy’s pictures decorated the walls along with Lydia’s samplers. Instead of the usual saccharine sentiments like Home, Sweet, Home, Lydia’s samplers quoted Cesar – Vini, Viti, Vici. I came, I saw, I conquered.

Al looked back at the parade to see a familiar set of shoulders dismount is horse in front of the Grand Central. Magistrate Clagett in all his dusty glory. Al looked up to the hill, he’d look forward to watching Lydia gut him like a fish. He wondered if Clagett was stupid or arrogant enough to carry his warrant and Addy’s adoption papers on his person. Al bet on arrogance. Clagett looked up as he dismounted and nodded at Al as if he hadn’t a care.

“You’ll die today, you little cocksucker,” and he reached around his back to the Bowie knife he kept there always just in case Lydia didn’t sport her own knife. “You’ll never make it out of this camp alive,” he vowed.

Al turned to Dan Dority, “Tell Johnny to brew some coffee and open some peaches.”

*****

Lydia loaded up the pram. The boys were asleep. Emma stood on a plank of wood, a platform Lydia had affixed to the back axle and her chubby little hands gripped the back of the pram. Addy, her nose in a book as usual was at her right elbow. She was low on provisions and visits to the green grocer and meat purveyor in China Alley were in order. She stopped at the top of the bluff and watched the parade of cavalry enter the town. She considered abandoning her effort, but a quick visit to the camp would be best earlier in the day before the soldiers got too drunk and dissolute.

As she walked into town, she formulated a plan – a short visit to Alma and Sofia, where she’d leave her children for a quick visit to Mr. Wu. If Al could not spare Dan or Johnny, perhaps E.B. could spare Richardson as an escort. She pushed on.

The thoroughfare was busy, teeming with soldiers as well as the usual prospectors and those who mined the miners. “Addy, I think we should pay a brief visit to Mrs. Garret.”

“Why are there all these soldiers?” Addy asked.

“I do not know. The Army has been chasing the Sioux since Little Big Horn. Best you stay with Mrs. Garret and Sofia, while I gather our vegetables from Mr. Wu. If I can’t it’s oatmeal for dinner.”

“You’ll not get a complaint from me,” said Addy. “What about the claim?”

“Yesterday, I hired a foreman and six miners and Mr. Ellsworth to oversee, they’ll see to the claim in my absence.”

“They gonna sink a shaft today?”

“Perhaps.”

Lydia pulled the carriage nearly to the front of the Grand Central only to see a distraught Alma pick up Sofia and carry her out the door and head to the edifice, which bore the sign Bullock & Star. 

“Alma!” Lydia tried to shout over the din of cavalry drums. Her friend continued on her grim mission looking neither right nor left but certainly as if she would cry. She moved as quickly as her corset, skirts and gentile upbringing permitted.

“What has happened?” Lydia asked E.B. Farnum. 

“I don’t know.” He took a quick peek at the still sleeping babies. “How is it they are not awake in this cacophony?”

Lydia shook her head. “And should I drop a pin at home…”

“Then they provide the cacophony.”

“Hey, there’s Charlie and Joanie Stubbs,” said Addy before crossing the room.

“Do you have any idea what has upset Alma?” Lydia asked Charlie.

“Can’t say I do. I have a pocketful of coin from Jane for the child’s cuss jar.”

A small movement caught Lydia’s eye. “How long has he been here?” she bit out.

Charlie looked at the man at the top of the stairs. “The New York dandy, yesterday.”

“That’s Alma’s father.”

E.B. drew himself up in all his obsequiousness. “Antemeridian constitutional, Mr. Russell, or will you be rolling the bones again?”

“It must cost you sleep. The guests you drive off, the chances of thieving and bilking you lose needing to rub against your betters,” Otis Russell sneered.

“And certainly a wasted effort today,” returned Lydia, “as a barrel boarder and a clip such as yourself hardly constitutes his better.”

Otis Russell spun around and raised his cane as if to strike Lydia, but thought the better of it as he stared into the barrel of her side iron. She had pulled it quickly and silently from between the folds of her skirt. “This isn’t a two-shot huckleberry, Otis. Tread lightly and do not ever think to raise your cane or your hand to me or to your daughter.”

Russell lowered the cane and took a long draw on his cigar. “Alma said you were in the camp.”

“I am.”

“Your quick draw a gift from Mr. Hickok?”

“It is.”

“And the babies?”

“Frank Newton’s.”

“You sure. I heard you were Hickok’s whore.”

“Sadly, no.”

Bullock reached the door of the hotel. Upon hearing the exchange between Lydia and Otis Russell, his anger went from white hot to blue. “You and I are gonna talk,” said Bullock between clenched teeth.

“You don’t account for my preferences?” returned Russell.

The remainder of their conversation was lost to the noise of the street.

“Mama, he called you a whore,” whispered Addy. The color had drained from the eight-year-old’s cheeks.

“Always consider the source, Addy,” said her mother as she slid her iron into its holster. “Mr. Russell is a very bad person, very bad people cannot help themselves from saying very bad things.”

“It’s his nature?”

“It is.”

“How is he bad?”

“In so many ways. Alma was to be my sister-in-law.”

“Truly?” asked Charlie Utter.

“Truly. Our families met on our tour of Europe and Alma and my brother, Robert, were well-matched. Our fathers on the other hand were not. Otis Russell was in arrears to several gambling establishments. Indeed, the timing of the trip was not coincidental, it was to avoid the muscle of his creditors. My father baulked at the prospect of a lifetime of paying Otis’s debts and that was that.” She stopped and smoothed her skirt. “Alma appeared headed toward Seth Bullock’s hardware and Mr. Bullock’s appearance confirms my suspicions, perhaps we should check in on her.”

“I’ll go with you,” volunteered Joanie Stubbs.

And just as they arrived at the store, Alma and Sofia appeared in the doorway. 

“Stay with Miss Stubbs,” Alma said and grabbed Lydia’s hand. “They’ve gone into the Bella Union.”

Bella Union whores, Charlie Utter, Sol Star, and E.B. Farnum circled the craps table and listened thunderstruck to the argument between the two men. Just as Lydia and Alma entered the bordello, there was an intake of breath as Otis Russell accused his daughter of complicity in the violent death of her husband. And then he made a near fatal error, he cocked his head to the side and invited Bullock to take his best shot.

And he did. Over and over again.

The beating lasted for several minutes, long enough for Lydia to relive Bill Hickok’s beating of the shitheel she once called her husband.

Like Frank Newton, Otis Russell’s face was covered in blood and gore. He spit out several teeth as his right eye flitted under a bloody and swelling lid. The left bulged in is socket – as it appeared the orbital bone had been crushed. He’d not see a thing for many days if ever. His left leg twitched as if trying to find purchase. The only thing missing was a sway-backed mare like the one Bill had thrown Frank over.

“Please, see to my father,” pleaded Alma to of one of the Bella Union whores before fleeing the bordello.

Lydia and Alma raced across the thoroughfare in front of General Crook’s horse. The sound of fife and drum was deafening. When they arrived at the hardware store, Alma wordlessly scooped up her child and as Lydia watched her pick her way through the crowd back to her rooms in the Grand Central, Joanie leaned in and asked, “What happened?”

“Seth Bullock gave Otis Russell a beating he’ll never forget.”

“Like the one Uncle Bill gave Frank Newton.”

“Just like that.”

“Did he spit out teeth?”

“Quite a few. Come, while the soldiers are busy with their parade, let’s walk to China Alley. Thank you for your assistance Joanie.”

Addy gave the pretty whore a quick hug and they were on their way.

“I think I’ll roast a chicken,” said Lydia as she pushed the pram through the muck.

“Mr. Russell’s face look like raw meat?”

“Adeline! You are becoming quite gruesome!”

“Sorry.”

Lydia chuckled and gave her daughter a side hug, “But gruesome or not, you are quite perceptive.”

Lydia loaded her string bag with vegetables while Wu’s clerk tied the feet of the dead, headless chicken to the pram. Just as she was about to head for home, an argument began at the Chinese laundry. A man Lydia knew to be a card sharp at one of the saloons was screaming at old Mr. Han and brandishing a knife.

“Let’s go this way, I don’t like the sound of that.” Just as she turned the pram, a shot rang out. 

“Oh no! Mama, that man in the funny hat shot Mr. Han!”

Wu was screaming over the body of his elderly cousin and Con Stapleton, the camp’s newly minted sheriff was strutting around like a dunghill rooster. As there was gunsmoke coming from the end of his Colt, the mystery of who had shot the old man had been solved. 

It was a pantomime, a set-up. She watched Cy Tolliver enjoy the scene as much as he enjoyed his Cuban cigar. And then she remembered, the card sharp was a dealer at the Bella Union. 

“Come Addy, let’s pay a visit to Mr. Merrick.”

“Won’t he be reporting on the parade?”

“I hope so, and with any luck he has left his door unlocked.”

The little girl smiled. “I’ll mind Emma and the babies while you visit with Al.”

“Babies!” said Emma pointing to her brothers.

*****

Lydia crept up the backstairs and crossed the balcony to Al’s office. She could hear the droning of General Crook from the thoroughfare. Dan was tending bar. “Is he in?”

The big man nodded. “Yes’em. Where’s your brood?”

“In Mr. Merrick’s office.”

“I’ll walk you home. Not a good day to be in town.” 

“I’ll be sleeping with my Winchester.”

Hearing the brief conversation, Al opened the door to his quarters. “Come in.”

“There’s something afoot, Al.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Enter and tell all.”

“Don’t quite know where to begin. Alma Garret’s father is in camp to know good purpose. Several minutes after calling me a whore…”

“He what?” Al pulled his Bowie knife from his desk. “He said what?”

“He called me Hickok’s whore, nearly took a swing at me with his silver-tipped cane. I pulled on him.” She poured herself a shot of whiskey. “I should have shot him.”

“My, my, whatever has happened to the well-bred young woman from Boston who arrived in our camp three months ago?”

“I put a stamp on her forward and mailed her back to her parents.”

“Anyway, Otis Russell is here to steal the claim out from underneath Alma and her child.”

“And that should concern me, how?” He poured himself a shot.

“The company he keeps.”

“Who?”

“Pinkerton. Alan Pinkerton, himself. That is how Brom met Alma’s acquaintance, their father’s both know Alan Pinkerton.”

“What else?” He knocked back his whiskey, then refilled her glass and his.

“Seth Bullock beat Otis Russell to a pulp in the Bella Union, but not before he accused his daughter of complicity in her husband’s death.”

Al sat up a little straighter. That had gotten his attention.

“You’ll be getting a visit from Wu. Mr. Han is dead.”

“Don’t know Han.”

“Yes, you do. Little old man who works at the laundry.”

“Works for Wu.”

“Blood relative.”

“Who did in Han?”

“Cy Tolliver.”

Al raised his eyebrows. “But not as to get his manicured hands dirty.”

“Exactly. At first I didn’t recognize the man arguing with Han about his shirts. When I saw Tolliver it clicked into place. He’s a card sharp at the Bella Union, the opium eater who used to hang around with Jimmy Irons.”

“Leon shot him.”

“No, like I said it was a set-up. Leon provoked the argument. It was our illustrious new sheriff who pulled the trigger. My back was turned when he fired, but I saw the gunsmoke spill from his gun.”

“I see.”

“I don’t think I’m being farfetched in thinking Tolliver is seeking to make a play for China Alley.”

Al nodded. “I need about a dozen of you.”

“Be careful what you wish for. And Al, I know Farnum swore in our new sheriff in this saloon. You might wish to have a talk with E.B. and tell him there needs to be a change in personnel.”

“I’ll take that under advisement.”

“Dan volunteered to walk us home.” She got up from her chair. “Best be going, sounds like the General is wrapping up his speech.”

“Tell him to quick step it back. Cavalry is always trouble. I have some news for you.”

Lydia dropped her hand from the doorknob. “What is it?”

He beckoned her to accompany him onto the outside balcony. “Across the street. Our favorite, cocksucker rode in with the General. He says he’s serving as Crook’s advisor in the territory.”

“General Crook needs a good hot pair of tweezers to pull that bloated tick from his leg.”

When Claggett felt Lydia’s eyes upon him he stepped back into the shadows of the porch of the Grand Central.


	19. Chapter 19

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> General Crook and the cavalry come to Deadwood with the dissembling Magistrate Claggett in tow. Silas Adams and his "butler", Hawkeye return to the camp in search of Claggett. Lydia and Addy turn out to be reliable spies for Al.

The door to the balcony was open and Al stood, half in half out, chewing both on a toothpick and several tactics to bring to fore against Claggett. 

The sun was down, but the street seemed as busy as it had been this afternoon. He listened to the reports of Dan, Johnny and E.B. To a man, they reinforced all of the intelligence Lydia had provided him earlier and added several important updates. Seth Bullock had defrocked Con Stapleton, Tom Nuttal had fired the clown-hatted card sharp who had in turn scampered down the thoroughfare to a new job with Cy Tolliver and Seth Bullock had put an encouraging bug in Dan’s ear to finish off Otis Russell, as if Al or Dan had needed encouragement.

They were all in the same place, Dan volunteered. “I can take all of’em – Claggett, Tolliver, the widow’s father and the fucknut Stapleton if need be. This is the kind of murder you preach, Al. Save us trouble down the road.”

“You can’t deal with what’s down the road until you’ve dealt with what’s on it.”

“And what’s on it is Magistrate Claggett’s seemingly cozy relationship with General Crook,” added E.B.

Al returned to his doorway, his head lowered in thought, when he looked up who should he see but the magistrate’s bagman, Silas Adams, and his nearly silent partner, Hawkeye.

“Well, well, look who we have here, the Magistrate’s bagman.” He turned and looked over his shoulder.

The men popped up from their chairs like jacks in the box. 

“Moderation in all things,” Al murmured to Dan as the big man lumbered out the door.

*****  
“That was a delicious chicken!” said Addy as she cleared the plates from the table.

“Thank you. Did I tell you today, how much I love you and how grateful I am you’re my daughter?”

“Once or twice, but I never tire of it.” 

“Have you finished your book?”

“Almost.”

“I’ll get the rest of these dishes.”

With that William gave out a wail. “Not until he’s had his supper!” smiled Addy. She picked up William and handed him to his mother. “Hurry, James hasn’t stirred yet.”

The baby settled into her breast.

“I saw Magistrate Claggett,” Addy said. “I tried to ask him about my paper, but he was with some men from the cavalry and that evil Mr. Tolliver and he ignored me.”

“I saw him too. Tried to hide in the shadows of the porch, but I saw him.”

“What did Al say? You never told me.”

“I spoke to him about Mr. Han and who I think is responsible.”

“I heard something very interesting.”

“What’s that?”

“Magistrate Claggett and Cy Tolliver were talking about getting the general to leave troops in the camp.”

“Truly. What did they say?”

“Well, the general didn’t hear. General’s not staying in the hotel, he’s got a room at the Bella Union. They’re all to dine this evening and Tolliver is to ask the general during dinner. He said to Magistrate Claggett he could promise the general no more than $50,000 for his men. I think the Magistrate wanted him to give more.”

Lydia shook her head. Cy Tolliver is planning to bribe George Crook. The idiot. “I can only imagine how poorly that offer will be received. And the only reason Claggett would argue for more money is he plans to skim some off the top.”

“Like cream. That’s a bribe, isn’t it?”

“It surely is.”

“If there were law in Deadwood, Cy Tolliver and Magistrate Claggett could go to jail.”

“And I couldn’t think of a better place for them.”

“Me neither.”

James started to fuss, just as his brother finished. The baby had a sweet little smile on his face. She wiped the milk from the corner of his mouth then sat him upright to burp him. She had tapped his back only once when a burp a rummy would have envied came out of his mouth.

“How can something so tiny make so much noise,” Addy joked.

“He’s wet,” Lydia said as she traded her daughter one brother for another. 

“In one end out the other,” Addy joked. “I’ll change him.”

“Don’t forget the cloth,” her mother smiled. “You’ve already been baptized once today.”

“Right in the eye!”

There was a knock at the door. 

“Who is it?”

“Jane.”

“Let Jane in.”

Addy put the half-naked William into his cradle and ran to unlock the door.

“Cavalry cocksuckers in camp.” She pulled a penny from her britches and handed it to Addy. “I wanted to make sure you were okay.”

“We’re fine and you came right on time. I need to go to the Gem. Something is afoot.”

“You sound like that Limey cocksucker Sherlock Holmes. But it ain’t safe.” She fished in her pocket for another penny.

“I’m gonna change back into my mining clothes. They’ll think I’m another prospector. Addy, get Jane a plate of food.”

Fifteen minutes later, back in her now baggy fishing boots and an old coat of Frank’s, she sped down the hill to the Gem.

“Where’s Al?”

“Sweet Jesus, I almost didn’t recognize you,” said Dan. He talked over her keeping his eye on a soldier in the titty corner. “He’s kinda busy.”

“He needs to hear what Addy overheard this afternoon. Out of Claggett’s own mouth.”

Dan’s head snapped downward. “I’ll get you in. Come on, ain’t fit for you in here. Go up to his office.”

Dan walked into the whore’s quarters just as Al was putting the finishing touches on a mercy killing of the minister. The poor man had been seizing and screaming the whole afternoon, not that the randy soldiers paid him much mind.

“Al, magistrate’s here. I got those two others, Adams and Hawkeye, in your office. Lydia’s with ‘em.”

“Lydia?”

“Says it’s real important, something about Claggett.”

“Johnny keep an eye on the magistrate. Keep his attention away from the balcony, I’m going up the back stairs.”

Moments later he was through the door to his office.

“Oh good, Dan found you.”

“He did. What brought you out on this fine evening?”

“She looked to her right at Adams.”

“It’s alright, Lydia. Proceed.”

“Addy just told me this after dinner, and I just confirmed it with Bullock.”

“Bullock?”

Lydia waved her hand. “I didn’t tell Bullock what I’m telling you.” She took a deep breath. “While we were in conversation this afternoon, Addy caught sight of Magistrate Claggett in the company of General Crook and Cy Tolliver.”

“E.B. told me the General was resting comfortably in the Bella Union.”

“Addy approached the magistrate with the hope of raising the issue of her name. He brushed her away and the action put several steps’ distance between Claggett and the general who was in conversation with another officer. She heard Claggett arguing with Tolliver about the size of the bribe Tolliver should offer to General Crook to encourage him to allow a dozen or more men from the regiment remain in camp.”

“How much?”

“$50,000. Addy said Magistrate Claggett argued for more, but Tolliver wouldn’t budge.”

“And what about Bullock?”

“I was running so fast, I ran straight into him. He had just come from the Bella Union. He told me he had seen Tolliver dining with Magistrate Claggett and General Crook. I made some joke about wanting to be a fly on the wall. Apparently, Tolliver made the offer of a $50,000 bribe twice – first when Seth was waiting to speak to General Crook and then as he was leaving. He heard him plain as day.”

“Do you know what the bribe is to pay for?”

“To encourage the general garrison a dozen of his men in the camp?”

“What did Crook say?”

“Turned him down flat.”

Al came from around his desk took Lydia by the hand and kissed it. “Two fascinating conversations in one day. I am blessed.” He put his arm over her shoulders. “Magistrate’s downstairs.”

“Give me your knife.”

Al looked at her to see if she was joking, she wasn’t. 

“He made her cry. She cried herself to sleep for the next three nights and she’s stewed about it every night since. She wants this more than being a mathematician.”

“Go down the back way. Have Merrick walk you home.”

“He doesn’t need to, I’m heeled.”

Silas coughed. “You ever draw on a man?”

“This very afternoon.”

Al gestured to Johnny as he walked down the stairs, Johnny in turn murmured something to the magistrate who appeared to be gazing at the copious bosom of the whore to his right. He turned and crossed the room to meet Al. “Things are in the saddle, Al.”

“Come upstairs and tell me what you mean.” When he opened the door to his quarters, Adams and Hawkeye were standing side by side. “Adams, your employee, and his butler,” drawled Swearengen.

“Yes. How are you Adams?”

“I’m fine, sir. Missed you in Yankton.”

“Yes, I was in the company of General Crook.” He took the empty chair as Al walked behind the desk. 

“Adams bore you my message to try fucking yourself.”

“And here he is, in your office.”

“Thought I’d catch up with you here, sir.”

“Do you no longer serve his interest is what he’s wondering,” said Al. “Adams for his part is stone featured, steeled in his purpose.”

“Which he’d be,” finished Dan.

“Be that as it may, we are living in an age of doubt, please magistrate proceed.” Al’s voice had all the oily qualities of a procurer.

Claggett nodded and began his yarn. “General Crook is at the point of making a decision as to whether to garrison some number of soldiers here or to let the camp make its own way. I understand your preference in this regard, but you must understand the General has come to trust me and rely on my counsel exclusively.”

Al shot a look to Hawkeye. Everything Addy had heard was gospel truth. Claggett was a dissembler of the first order. As he wouldn’t be making any money off Tolliver, he was turning his sights on Al. He would take credit for ensuring that troops would not be garrisoned in the camp, when General Crook had no intention of leaving any of his men behind.

“The appropriate gesture made by you toward me would lead me to dissuade the general from the garrison option as well as clear away the personal uncertainties from the cloud above you, namely the incident in Chicago.”

“You have the document of inquiry upon you?”

“The murder warrant, yes. Make me a gesture and the constable hand of the past will no longer weigh upon you.”

“What man couldn’t that be said about.”

With that Adams grabbed the magistrate by the forehead, while Hawkeye held his legs. 

They have done this before, thought Al.

Seconds later, Adams drew his Bowie knife across the throat of the magistrate, all the way to the backbone.

Claggett twitched, his mouth open in a silent scream. For several minutes his still beating heart pumped a fountain of blood onto the floor.

Adams flipped open the magistrate’s frock coat and removed his wallet. He pulled out the warrant. “I’d be happy to give you this paper, if you’d take that fucking gun off me.”

Dan dumped a Colt iron on the desktop.

“Both of ‘em.” 

A rifle followed.

Adams handed the warrant to Al, who opened it and started to read. “What about Addy?” he asked without looking up.

He thumbed through the wallet. “Cocksucker.” He pulled out an envelope. “It’s addressed to Messrs. Puttick and Simpson of a New York auction house bearing their names. Lydia was right. He was planning on selling Addy’s adoption papers for Hickok’s signature, minimum bid $1,000.” He read the appending letter, his once stone-featured countenance now filled with disgust. “You know, I tried to file the unsealed copy, but I had no luck. This’ll do the trick.”

“Get him out of here. Dan, show them the back way.”

“Yes, boss.”

“Lydia’s in her house or that hotel?”

“House, why?”

“Gotta take’em to Yankton for McCall’s trial.”

“When are you leaving?”

“Thursday.”

“Two days, not much warning.”

Adams shrugged. “Can’t be helped.”

“I still owe you the two. Anything on his person is yours.”

With that the clarion of a bugle. The cavalry announced it was leaving camp. 

Adams stopped. “Thank God, Lydia came down here and told us what Addy had overheard. This might have ended differently.”

“I’d be out $50,000.”

“He would have milked it, maybe $60,000. If we didn’t know the truth he sounded…”

“Pretty convincing,” finished Al.

*****

As he walked through her front garden, Silas watched Lydia through parted curtains. What a beautiful woman she is. Lydia for her part had a basket of mending at her hip. She appeared to be lowering the hem of one of Addy’s dresses. Had the child grown in a month? Children were known to do it and Addy was so small, she was overdue for a growth spurt. As he grew closer to the house, his nose caught the air of roasted chicken and his stomach rumbled. He hadn’t eaten since breakfast and the truth be told, killing a man always made him hungry. Not that he killed very many.

She looked up when she heard his boots on the porch. He knocked on the window and waved. “It’s just me.” That’s when he noticed the Winchester. She had feared trouble from the soldiers. Smart woman.

“Good evening, Silas.”

“I got your paper.”

She smiled. “Do come in.”

He liberated the mud from each boot, with the vertical blade of a boot scraper and walked into the front parlor. “This is nice. A piano, a whole wall of books. Must be near on a hundred.”

“It’s not all wall,” she giggled. She lifted the door latch that lay flat against the wood and turned. The door opened onto the dining room. “Isn’t it marvelous?”

His stomach growled again.

“Are you hungry, Silas?”

“I couldn’t put you out.”

“Perish the thought. I’ve got chicken, green beans, biscuits. Won’t take me but a moment to heat the beans.”

“Ma’am, I’ll eat’em cold.”

“Where’s Hawkeye?”

“Getting a snoutful at the Gem.”

“I have wine.”

“Livery says you have a wagon,” Silas pulled out a chair in the dining room. 

“So, you’re here to fetch me.” She put a plate of food in front of him.

“Smells real good.” He took a forkful of beans and chicken. “Tastes even better.”

“Are you sure I can’t warm it for you?”

He shook his head. “I’m fine.” He lashed the biscuit with butter. “Hmm, haven’t had a decent biscuit in I don’t know how long. Ones at that restaurant in the Grand Central are cemeteries for countless bugs and the café across the street from the courthouse in Yankton,” he paused. “Well, they’re like lead.”

She returned from the kitchen with the wine and two glasses. “Cold water,” she said.

“Beg pardon.”

“Cold water works best on a blood stain.”

He looked down at his pant leg. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Claggett’s?”

He nodded.

“What kind of a man looks into the eyes of a child and lies the way he did?”

“He dissembled ‘til the end. If you hadn’t risked life and limb, Al might have believed him. I nearly did.”

“They’ll be another just like him.”

“Always is.”

She sipped her wine. “Who else has been called to testify?”

“The card sharp who worked at Nuttal’s No. 10 and Captain Massie.”

“Massie left camp.”

“We heard. There’s a warrant out for his arrest.”

“What’s the name of the card sharp?”

“Con Stapleton.”

Lydia rolled her eyes.

“Don’t like him?”

“He shot an unarmed man in China Alley today. An elderly Chinese, Mr. Han. Addy was quite fond of him, as was I. It was a set up job, Tolliver’s card sharp started a fight and Stapleton ended it. He was strutting around like a dunghill rooster.”

“He’s out as sheriff. Dan told me he’s in at Tolliver’s.”

“Well, there you have it.” She refilled his glass.

“You’re up late.”

She smiled. “Just fed them. I’ll feed them again at midnight, two, four, and six and start my day all over again.”

“Greedy little buggers.”

“They are, but worth it.”

“I’ll never forget that day.”

“I’ll be you won’t.”

“One of the best of my life. Truly.” He held up his glass to her.

She touched hers to his. “Mine as well. More?”

“I won’t say no to a touch more wine and another biscuit if you got one.”

“I do.” She poured the wine before retreating into the kitchen. She came back with a biscuit and a baby. “You never did get to hold one that day. Say hello to James Butler Newton.”

“I’m afraid.”

“Don’t be. He’s just had has bath. Always make sure you hold his head.”

“Hello James. Remember me?”

The baby’s eyes fluttered open. He stared long and hard at Silas Adams. “I heard when they’re first born they’re blind, but he’s giving me the all over.”

“I think that’s a myth. Sometimes it takes a while for their eyes to focus, but James Butler has mastered the dead eye.”

“May I kiss him?”

“You may.” 

He leaned down and softly kissed the downy forehead. He took a deep breath. “What makes’em smell so nice?”

Lydia chuckled. “Trust me, they don’t always smell so nice.”

Silas laughed in turn, “I guess not.”

“Do you have children, Silas?”

“No ma’am. Never held one this small until today. No nieces or nephews neither. I had two sisters, both were taken by the cholera before I was born.”

“I’m so sorry.” She leaned forward and squeezed his arm.

“I know about the one that died. Addy’s first memory of life with you.”

Lydia hung her head. “I was so afraid I’d lose these boys. Never told him I was carrying twins.”

“Where is he?”

“Damned if I know. Bill gave him swift justice, threw him over the back of a mare and hit the horse on the rump. That’s the last I saw of him. I have a lawyer in Cheyenne looking for him. If he can find him, I’m suing him for divorce. But if he can’t find Frank dead or alive, I must wait seven years to petition the court and have him declared dead.”

“What about your claim?”

“It’s mine. My money paid for it, I have the letter my daddy sent with the bank draft. I’ve worked it. And the second half of the claim, the one that has produced the most color, I bought free and clear. Worst comes of it, I lose this house.”

“It’s a beautiful home, but you can build another.”

“My cousin is an architect. He sent me the renderings.”

“Man’s got talent.”

“He has.” Lydia tilted her head. “William’s awake. Can’t sleep without his brother. Oh, look at the time, it’s nearly midnight.”

“Time flew. You’re an easy person to talk to Lydia. Hawkeye ain’t much for talk, got about four bits of nothing out of him from Yankton all the way here.” 

“Thank you.” She threw a shawl over her shoulders and went to fetch William. She caught him right before he was set to wail. She returned to the table, the baby at her breast, discretely shielded by the shawl.

“I had hoped to wean Emma before these two were born. I think she nurses more for comfort. She loves her food, but,” Lydia smiled, “but there are days when I think I will just begin to moo and never stop.”

“This is an interesting turn of a conversation.” His ears turned pink.

“It’s been an interesting day.”

“Can’t believe how big they got in a month.”

“Wait until you see Addy! I was just taking down the hem of her dress.”

“Mama, who are you talking to?”

“I’m sorry did we wake you up,” answered Silas.

“Is that you, Silas?” Addy galloped down the stairs.

“It is. Just getting reacquainted with your brothers.” He held out his free arm. “How come your hair’s all wet?”

“I had a bath. We have hot running water!”

“You don’t say.”

“And a nice big bath tub. Emma and I took one together.”

“How’s my girl? You been behaving your mama?”

“Yes, sir,” she whispered into his neck.

“Gotta surprise for you. I found the paper!”

“Magistrate Claggett had it? Mama was afeared he’d mail it to an auction house.”

“Nothing to fear now. I had asked about filing it without the seal, but I had no luck. But now I have the letter. Gonna get a copy of the newspaper with the death announcement and the two together should do the trick. This time next week you’ll officially be Adeline Hickok.”

“It was my dearest wish. Even more than studying mathematics.”

“What did I tell you?”

Silas nodded his head. If Addy wanted to be a Hickok more than a mathematician, it was a powerful thing to want.

“On Thursday, we will accompany Silas to Yankton. Jack McCall will stand trial.”

“It will be lovely to see Uncle Lorenzo.”

“Who’s that?”

“Wild Bill’s brother. He will be representing the family at the trial.”

“Can’t see they’ll be much to it. Seems like a cut and dried case.”

“You would have thought that ‘til Magistrate Claggett got involved,” Addy’s mouth was a straight line, her forehead furrowed.

“Yet another reason to dislike the man. Don’t worry Addy, he has nothing to do with this trial. They’ll be a real judge, real lawyers and a real jury, not some farce of a miner’s meeting.”

“You’re sure about Magistrate Claggett?”

“I’m sure. He’s with General Crook now. They left the camp about an hour ago,” he lied.

“Good. It made me sick at heart to see him. And when I stopped him to ask about the paper, he looked right through me as if I wasn’t there.”

“It was a good thing you told your mama about what the magistrate said.”

“It was?”

“It’s one of the reasons why the cavalry left. Mr. Tolliver tried to bribe the general.”

“He’s a bad man too.” She stopped. “Mama, who’s backing Mr. Tolliver?”

“What do you mean?”

“Remember when he came to town with all of his fancy paintings and fancy ladies.”

“I do.”

“Nothing fancy about the Gem. That’s why I painted those pictures for Al, Trixie and Jewel, so they’d have some fancy pictures to hang on their walls.”

“I’ve seen your picture. Hanging right up in a place of honor in Al’s office.”

“I think someone gave him the money for the Bella Union, for the bribe, probably for other things too.”

James Butler started to fuss.

“Oh this ain’t good,” muttered Silas.

“William almost done, mama?”

“He is.” She sat him up and burped him. He had a gas bubble smile.

“Are your hands clean?”

Silas nodded. 

“The put your pinky finger in his mouth until mama’s ready.”

As promised James Butler started to nurse on his finger. Silas wondered how much time they had before the infant realized he’d been duped. The suction on his finger was strong and his own nipples hurt in sympathy.

Addy traded James Butler for William. “Nice to see you again, William. How do you tell them apart?”

“It’s easy,” answered Addy. “He’s got this little thing on his ear.”

“Other than that, they are exactly the same?”

“Fraid so.”

William gave Silas a milky smile.

“You’re a contented little man. Had your chow and a good belch.”

Addy yawned. 

“Best you get back to bed. You’ll see Silas tomorrow. He’s coming for lunch.”

“I am?”

“And dinner, too?”

“And dinner, too.”

“What about Hawkeye?”

“Of course.” 

“Shall I put William to bed?”

Addy took the baby from Silas’s arms and he watched the back of the eight year old as she climbed the stairs. “The wisdom of children. I’m gonna ask Al if he knows who’s backing Tolliver.”

She nodded.

“You were right as rain about Claggett. The document was in an envelope addressed to an auction house in New York City. He had negotiated a minimum bid of $1,000.”

Lydia whistled quietly through her teeth. “For a price like that, he made up quite a provenance for the document.”

“I’m sure he did. Best I get going. You need whatever little sleep you do get, and I gotta make sure Hawkeye hasn’t gotten into too much trouble.”

Lydia expertly did up the front of her dress and walked Silas to the door. 

“Thank you for everything.”

He bowed and kissed her hand.


	20. Chapter 20

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This begins Lydia's trek to Yankton to testify in the murder trial of Jack McCall. The series did not touch on this trial at all, Jack McCall's tale ends with his capture of Seth Bullock and Charlie Utter, who bring the man to trial in Yankton, then capitol of the Dakota Territory. But the trial is an important piece of history and despite McCall's lack of funds, he was ably, though unsuccessfully, defended. Also, I am making more of the character of Hawkeye, 
> 
> A note -- word disease was the 19th century term for dyslexia.

“All set?”

“I am.” 

“I’m still full from yesterday. That was a spectacular dinner.”

“It was,” Hawkeye agreed. “Ain’t never had chocolate cake before.”

“Never?”

“Got it in my head it was mud.”

“We’re going by the stage road as far as Fort Pierre. The Fort Commandant will see to the horses and the wagon. Then’s it’s the train from Fort Pierre to Yankton.”

“How long will it take us, Silas?” asked Addy.

“Well, it’s about 200 miles to Fort Pierre. That’s about four or five days, give or take.”

“Give or take what?”

“Axel breaking, rest the animals.”

“How long on the train?”

“Two days. Next year, the train will come all the way to Deadwood.”

“Oh,” said Emma.

“I think Emma’s gonna like the train. We can count the stops.”

“How high can she count?”

“Emma can count to 100 if I help her.”

Silas whistled. “You gonna teach her to be as smart as you?” smiled Silas as he flicked his wrists. The wagon lurched forward.

He eased the wagon down he bluff and through the main thoroughfare of the camp. Con Stapleton, looking more foolish than dapper, set astride a mare that looked more ready for the knackers than a 200 mile ride to Fort Pierre.

“That mare ain’t gonna make it, partner,” said Hawkeye. “She’s half lame.”

“I can ride your horse if need be,” huffed Stapleton. 

“No. Thunderstruck don’t like no one riding him but me,” said Silas.

“I don’t even ride him. He’ll throw ya, partner for sure,” agreed Hawkeye. “Never seen such a particular horse.”

Stapleton stared longingly at Lydia’s chest. “I could always ride in the wagon.”

“Get yourself to the livery and get yourself a decent horse,” ordered Silas. “I don’t see you in an hour’s time, I’m gonna get on Thunderstruck and come back for you. Then, I’ll buffalo ya and tie you over a mule. Five days over the back of a mule. You get me.”

Con Stapleton turned his horse toward the livery.

“He’s gonna be a panic,” Hawkeye shook his head.

“He killed Mr. Han in cold blood, I don’t want to have anything to do with him,” hissed Addy. “Mr. Han was a scholar when he lived in China and he was shot like a rabid dog in China Alley.”

Emma shook her head, mimicking her sister. “No.”

“You don’t have to speak to him, Addy, not unless spoken to. Be civil. Remember anything we say or do will be reported to Cy Tolliver and as we know not where Mr. Tolliver’s loyalties lie, one misspoken word may be used against us at a future juncture.”

“That’s some advanced thinking,” agreed Hawkeye.

“Okay,” agreed Addy. “But I still don’t like him.”

“And this is the real hard part. We can’t act over familiar.”

“Well hold on now,” began Hawkeye. “Addy was teaching me my letters. I can make my mark already.”

Lydia shook her head. “I’m not being clear. We can express, within limits, the cordiality we feel one to another, but we must never forget ourselves around him. There is bad blood between Con Stapleton and Al Swearengen, the genesis of which I am uncertain, but I do know it is long-lived and deep. They frankly hate each other.”

Silas interrupted, “I hear what you’re saying. Stapleton and Tolliver are newly found friends and a toad like Stapleton will do all he can to ingratiate himself to Tolliver, including making Tolliver aware, I ain’t just Yankton’s bagman.”

“So you know for a fact, that feller has cast his line into Mr. Tolliver’s pond?” asked Hawkeye.

“I do. I believe Tolliver thinks Stapleton is useful to him. I cannot imagine why.”

“He proved useful in China Alley,” said Silas.

Lydia nodded. “So civil and polite. Never bring up Al’s name or…”

“Or it goes right back to Tolliver,” Addy sighed. “Isn’t this just a putrid bucket of worms!”

Lydia turned from the buckboard. “Where did you learn such a phrase?”

Addy pointed at Hawkeye.

Hawkeye shrugged. “She’s getting me lettered, I had to give her something in trade. But I’ll tell you something else, that man has a fixation.”

“I saw that,” Silas nodded. ”Didn’t like it one bit.”

“Thought you saw it, son.” A sly smile crept across Hawkeye’s face.

“A fixation on what?”

“On your dibbeys,” answered Hawkeye.

“My what?”

“Your bosoms,” translated Silas.

“Heavenly hour!” shouted Addy slapping herself on the forehead.

Emma mimicked her sister, slapped herself on the side of her head and then shaking her little finger let out a torrent of baby talk in a tone that assured all and sundry, she was not happy with the world.

“You tell’em Emma!” cackled Hawkeye. “Give’em hell.”

“Hawkeye, this is about the most I’ve ever heard you speak,” laughed Lydia.

“Oh, I’m about done for the rest of the journey. Just about reached my limit. I’m planning on doing a lot of sleeping in my saddle, especially after that fucknut returns. Don’t wanna hear him run his mouth.”

“And he’s sure to run it,” agreed Silas.

“Shit yeah.”

Lydia turned and looked at her daughter.

“I have him on a payment plan. He gave me a dollar in advance, like Al. He’s got ninety-two cents in the bank. I’m not counting dibbeys as that is slang rather than a curse. Should I hear Mr. Stapleton curse, however, I have every intention of charging him double.”

“Charge him a nickel and let him negotiate downwards,” suggested Silas.

“I’ll reinforce the proposition and tell him you’re charging me a nickel. He’ll think he got the better of ya.” Hawkeye winked. “Shit, here he comes. Ain’t that a mule? No, just a horse with big ears.”

“This one look lame?” asked Lydia.

“I wouldn’t buy it at auction, but it should get him to Fort Pierre,” answered Hawkeye.

Silas rolled his eyes. “Fort Pierre can’t get here quick enough.”

“Will he ride with us on the train?” asked Addy.

Silas shook his head. “No. You, your mama, and the babies will have a private compartment. We’re stuck with him,” sighed Silas. He pulled to the side of the road to let a Concord stage, bearing the name of Wells Fargo, pass. 

“How far apart are the stage stations?” asked Lydia. She had pulled her knitting out of a brocade satchel.

“Every ten to fifteen miles.”

“That’s much better than the wagon trail we took from Cheyenne.”

“It’s a lot less dangerous too. Stage road used to be an old buffalo trail, but now it sees lots of stage and freight traffic. You’re rarely alone, which makes road agents think twice.”

“I would have thought they’d think twice seeing two stalwart men like you and Hawkeye.”

Silas smiled. “Here that Hawkeye? We’re stalwart.”

“Is there an ointment for that?” he joked.

“Mama,” said Addy. “William’s stirring.”

“Has it been two hours already?” Lydia sighed, putting away her knitting.

Addy opened Wild Bill’s Waltham repeater gold pocket watch. “Yes, mama, two hours on the dot.” She scampered deep into the Calistoga and returned with her fussing brother and Lydia’s shawl. 

The baby had no more than latched on when Con Stapleton’s horse came abreast of the wagon.

Hawkeye cleared his throat.

Silas turned to watch the clown-hatted buffoon, his neck stretched like tortoise reaching for a leaf as he tried to catch a glimpse of the side of Lydia’s breast. He pulled the wagon to a stop.

“If I catch you again, you’ll walk to the witness stand with a blindman’s cane,” Silas said. His voice was low, but only an idiot could not hear the menace in it.

The idiot appeared to be deaf or perhaps too clever by half. He first tried looking the picture of innocence, when he realized he had failed he uttered, “Not sure I take your inference, and if I do, I’m not sure I like it.”

“Well, let me make myself clear. Mrs. Newton will not be made uncomfortable by your leering at her bosoms.”

“I was not…” began Stapleton.

“Looked that way to me, son,” said Hawkeye.

Stapleton looked back and forth between the two men. 

With that, Emma half-climbed onto the buckboard, wagged her little finger at Stapleton and let loose with another torrent of angry baby talk.

“Looks like we got a third witness,” said Silas.

“If it appeared I was leering at your bosoms, madam, I apologize. I was simply craning my neck for the first signs of Whitewood Creek.”

Silas rolled his eyes. “We’ll get to the creek soon enough. Pull your head back into its shell.”

*****

Lydia had traded places with Addy and was asleep with her babies in the back of the wagon.

“She don’t get much sleep does she?”

“No, sir. Sleeps when she can. Mama says the babies should start soon to eat less often, first three hours, then four. They won’t sleep through the night until they’re over ten pounds.”

“So it ain’t a bad habit to break’em of…they just change when they’ve a mind to,” said Hawkeye.

“I believe so. Mama says it is the price you pay for healthy, happy babies.”

“She loves you,” smiled Silas.

“She does. Never doubted it when Emma was born, don’t doubt it now.” She grabbed a large book from behind her. “Shall I read it you?”

“Sure, what’s that book about?”

“One of my favorites. I’ve read it three times. A Tale of Two Cities by Mr. Charles Dickens. I got this book when I was four. I read it once every year.”

Silas calculated the mathematics in his head. She first read the book when she was four, in all likelihood, Sweet Jesus, she’d been reading for years before that. “I’ve heard of him. Heard of Charles Dickens, Hawkeye?”

“The other man shrugged. “Can’t say I have.”

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,” began Addy.

Lydia stirred from her nap. She listened to her eldest daughter from the back of the wagon, her words punctuated by Emma’s soft snores. It mattered not a jot to Lydia that Addy was not of her womb, the little girl was simply the apple of her eye, her eldest daughter in truth. Lydia remembered how proud Wild Bill Hickok and Mike Williams were the day when they heard her read a sentence for the first time. 

It was a cold Sunday in January. Despite Frank’s withering look, she had invited Mike Williams and Bill for Sunday dinner. The snow fell softly, hissing as it fell, and the wind for once didn’t rattle the loose windows of their simple house. For weeks, Lydia had been working with Addy after she realized the baby could identify words on the written page. Today would be her debut, Addy was but two, seven months shy of her third birthday.

A month earlier, Lydia’s mother had written to her that she had taken out a subscription in her name to The Atlantic Monthly. The first issue Lydia received contained the inaugural installment of a serialization of a work by a new writer named Henry James. It was his maiden effort, Watch and Ward. To be sure, it was an immature novella – the plot was silly and the characters flawed and far from believable – but Lydia was convinced James showed great promise as a writer and in time, she was proved right.

Lydia thought it would be a parlor trick, Addy with her baby-lisp reading the first sentence of the novella. But a sentence became a paragraph, and a paragraph a full chapter. The adults sat mesmerized as a child, no a toddler, read sentence after sentence. And then she closed the magazine, turned to Lydia and said, “I enjoyed Mr. Collins book more.” Lydia had recently finished reading The Woman in White, another gift from her mother.

From that day forward, Addy had never turned back. Within six months, she was not only numerate, but the prospects of her genius in the subject were undeniable. Within a year, she had learned to play the piano and was performing simple works of her own composition. One, the “Wind in the Willow’s Branches”, Lydia had summited for publication to Groene and Company of Cincinnati and it had been accepted. Addy was not yet five. Her royalties from the sale of the work fueled in part by her age, which Frank thankfully never discovered, now stood at $100 – more than one year’s tuition at Harvard.

But Lydia worried. There were so few children in the camp – no more than a dozen, with a quarter of those in her own family. Aside from Sofia Metz Garret, the remainder were boys who showed no interest in Addy’s company. And while Sofia was a lovely child in both disposition and appearance, she was well-content to play with her dolls and at five, still was illiterate. Lydia had to remind herself most children were unlettered. 

Addy spent far too much time in the company of adults and many of the adults she kept company with would make Lydia’s hardscrabble, but affluent, parents shriek in horror – whores, pimps, card sharps, charlatans and whatever Richardson was. But what was more worrisome was not simply that Addy rubbed shoulders with sinners, she liked them. Addy, after all, was still eight and for a time Lydia worried she lacked the clarity and maturity to discern what little good existed in Deadwood from the bad. 

She needn’t. Addy often saw more than she did. Addy was not only keenly intelligent, she was shrewd, perhaps too shrewd for her own good. It was Addy, who after reading Marchiavelli’s The Prince, steered Lydia to Al. After Bill’s death, Lydia had had chided Al on the thoroughfare, but it had been Addy who made her realize their family needed an ally in the camp in case Frank returned and Al was the only man who possessed the muscle to be that ally. She had apologized to him, at Addy’s insistence, in public on the thoroughfare, in just the same spot where she had accused him of complicity in Bill’s murder.

It was Addy who befriended Silas Adams and Hawkeye, especially Hawkeye. It took Lydia the better part of a week to realize the brilliance of her daughter’s choice. Hawkeye would take a bullet for Addy, no harm would ever come to her in his company. Save Silas, the same could not be said for any other person even Al, and Lydia knew Al loved her family. 

Hawkeye not only got a kick out of Addy, he was beholden to her. It was Addy who discovered Hawkeye’s illiteracy stemmed not from sloth or stupidity or drunkenness, but because she had borrowed a medical book on neurology from Doc Cochran and she had correctly diagnosed Hawkeye as suffering from the newly discovered disability of word disease. After seeking her counsel and that of Doc Cochran’s, she had developed a personalized plan of attack.

But whom had Lydia become? She routinely wore trousers, swore and even spit in her hand to close a deal. She had shoveled grit, swung a pick and learned to pack a hole with dynamite. She had done all of this to feed, house and educate her children. 

Her life now was nothing like the one her sheltered upbringing had prepared her for. She had been an obedient child, a studious one. She had with only a modicum of complaint married the fop from an eminent family her father had picked for her. For a time, she blamed herself for Frank’s brutal behavior, his felonious nature. If she had only been able to love him, she could guide him and he would be a different man. A different man. 

Oh, Frank was a very different man than the charmer she had met at her college tea. It didn’t take long for Frank’s past to catch up with him, and she learned what fools her parents had been. His father had paid a good deal of money to hush up his son’s transgressions, but just as water always finds its level, so does gossip. In dribs and drabs, the horror that was Frank Newton became known to her. She had wanted a divorce, but her parents would not support her in such an endeavor.

But if she had not followed Frank to Abilene, she would never have met James Butler Hickok. And she remembered the last time she had drifted off to sleep in this wagon with his long arms around her and the girls. She had felt his beating heart that night and then she remembered how she felt that horrible afternoon in Nuttal’s No. 10, when she felt it stop. Silently, tears slid down her face as she realized the end of this journey closed the book on James Butler Hickok. She would play the part of sister and see justice done. And Agnes Thatcher Lake from her comfortable home in Cincinnati would reign as America’s own Queen Victoria, our mourner-in-chief.


	21. Chapter 21

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Silas and Hawkeye return to Deadwood to escort Lydia, her family and Con Stapleton to Yankton for Jack McCall's trial. For the purposes of the plot, I have shortened the time it normally took to make the journey, adding train service from Fort Pierre to Yankton, which wouldn't be built until the following year. As the journey is made in late fall, the risk of ice to river boats was considerable and services was spotty until the spring thaw.

“How many miles did we travel today?” asked Addy.

“I reckon over forty,” answered Silas. “Closer to forty-five.” He stopped the wagon at the sound of rifle shot. “Guess Hawkeye found us some dinner. That glade’s just as good a place as any to make camp.”

“How come we didn’t stay at the stage depot?” Addy shut her book on mathematical theorems.

“Wrong kind a people, darlin’,” answered Hawkeye who had emerged from the wood with a prairie chicken hanging from the saddle. “Sporting women headed for brothels in the Badlands.”

“How old?”

“Grown.”

“I’ll never forget that girl. Her eyes were so sad.”

“Sad eyes on such a happy day,” Hawkeye agreed. 

“I always thought if I saw her around the camp, I’d bring her home. She could go to school or clean house. Never have to go back.”

“They’d come and get her darlin’.”

Addy shook her head. “I don’t want to think about her anymore. How big is Yankton?” She jumped down unassisted from the wagon.

Silas chuckled. “Lots of words I could use to describe Yankton,” he said before helping Emma down from the wagon. “Big isn’t one of them. Last I heard, near on 7,500 people.”

“Cheyenne’s bigger. Deadwood’s even bigger. Abilene’s smaller. Have you been to any big cities, Silas?”

“I’ve been to Cheyenne, Denver, Chicago and Pittsburgh.”

“I’ve never been to Pittsburgh, but I did visit Chicago twice. Mama took me to Boston and I got to be a flower girl in my Uncle Robert’s wedding.”

“That must have been nice.”

“I put my toe in the Atlantic Ocean and I got to wear a real pretty dress! I’ll show it to you sometime. I’m too big to wear it now.”

“Well, how ‘bout that,” smiled Hawkeye.

“It was a wonderful trip. The church was really pretty. And Aunt Susan’s dress was exquisite – covered in seed pearls and lace.”

“What’s that word mean?” asked Hawkeye.

“Exquisite. Well, pretty’s here,” Addy held her hand even with her chest, “and beautiful is here,” she raised her hand to her nose, “and exquisite is here,” and her hand shot over her head. 

“Make me up a card tomorrow.” 

“A card?” said Stapleton pulling his saddle off his horse.

“He’s got word disease. He sees some letters backwards, so I’m teaching him a new way to read.”

“I never heard of such a thing.”

“So it doesn’t exist if you haven’t heard of it?” the girl’s voice dripped with sarcasm.

Lydia grabbed her arm. “Please do not use that tone with your elders.”

“Yes, mama.”

“Why don’t you return to telling your story about our trip?”

“Well, mama and I, we made a real vacation of it. Mama visited friends in New York and Chicago, too. From Chicago, we went down to Homer and visited with Wild Bill’s mama, my Grandma Polly. I have three uncles – Lorenzo, Oliver, and Horace – and two aunts – Celinda and Lydia. So, I don’t just have a mama named Lydia, I have an aunt, too. Uncle Lorenzo is coming in for the trial and I’m ever so anxious to see him again. He’s lovely.”

“You mentioned him before,” said Silas. “You hear from them often?”

“Mama and I both write them all regularly. Since Grandma Polly’s eyesight is poorly, she tells Lorenzo what to write.”

“That’s nice.”

“I wonder when dinner will be ready, I’m famished.”

“Me, too.”

“None of us will eat, Addy,” said Lydia as she plucked the chicken, if we don’t get a fire started.

*****

“What’s Hawkeye doing?”

Adams’s butler was leaning against a tree, whittling.

“Sharpening a stick by the looks of it. Hey, Hawkeye, you planning on swapping out your fishing line for a spear.”

He poked Stapleton between the shoulder blades. “As if! No, it’s to remind this one not to indulge in his fixation, which I just caught him doing.”

Stapleton’s face was purple. “You fucking cocksucker get that stick off my back!”

Addy was on her feet. “Ten cents, please.” Her outstretched hand awaited the cold feel of coin.

“Ten cents. That’s highway robbery! I thought children only got a penny a cuss.”

“I’ve raised my rates.”

Stapleton pointed at Hawkeye. “He cusses at a rate I’d say is damn near constant, yet I don’t see you sticking your hand under his nose.”

Addy stuck her hand in her pocket and retrieved her change purse. She pulled a shiny new $1 eagle. “He paid in advance. And now it’s fifteen cents.”

“In advance?”

“Yes, I keep track of how many times he cusses and I will return his balance once we part company. Should he exceed his limit, we will renegotiate our contract.”

Stapleton opened his mouth, reconsidered and snapped it shut.

“Had you finished that thought, Stapleton, I reckon you’d hit two bits in three short sentences,” laughed Silas.

“Are you on a payment plan as well?”

“I surely am. It’s expeditious.”

Stapleton handed over three nickels. Addy bit each in turn before depositing the coins in her purse.

“Silas, is there a bookstore in Yankton?”

“Two or maybe three. There’s one up by the college for sure.”

“There’s a college in Yankton?”

“Congregationalist church school.”

“Does it have a mathematics department?”

“I guess,” Silas shrugged.

In an instant she was on her knees, her hands clasped as if in prayer. “Oh mama, please may I go! Please!”

“I’m sorry Addy, I think it’s a men’s college,” said Silas.

Addy shut her eyes, as she tried fruitlessly to keep her tears at bay.

“I think Judge Bennett is familiar with the dean,” added Silas quickly. “Perhaps, he can make an introduction.”

“That would be lovely,” said Lydia as she stirred the bubbling stew of prairie chicken, onions, potatoes and carrots. “Perhaps on a day the court is not in session…”

“And if that is not possible,” said Hawkeye, “well I’d be well pleased to take her.”

“Thank you, Hawkeye.” She grabbed a cast iron frying pan. “Well these pan biscuits won’t make themselves.”

“I’ll help you, mama.”

*****

“You’ve been quiet,” Silas smiled as she handed him a plate of food.

“I’ve been thinking, thinking a good bit about the trial.”

“It’s a sure thing. Eye witnesses will testify McCall back shot him. Real judge, real lawyers…”

“Oh, I understand all that. It’s not a not guilty verdict I fear. It’s just reliving that horrible day.”

“First time I ever saw you cross the thoroughfare, I asked the gent next to me, who is that beautiful woman and his answer was that son is the Widow Hickok. I heard he was a good man, tough.”

“And as gentle as a lamb. He loved children. He would play tea party with Addy. Imagine, the sole survivor of the McCandless affair sipping pretend tea. When he was marshal, he’d often be found playing ball or jackstraws with the children.”

Silas laughed. “I can’t imagine that.” He ran his biscuit through the pan gravy. “These are good, real good. I usually survive strictly on jerky when I make this trip. Tell me more about how Wild Bill was with your children.”

“Addy worshiped him. They had a real bond. He wrote us regular, but save his presents for Addy at Christmas and her birthday, Frank destroyed each and every letter.”

“Feckless shitheel.” Silas shook his head in disgust.

“That’s exactly what Bill called him.”

“Mama, something has occurred to me. When we’d see Uncle Bill, he’d give you money for me.”

“Yes, those times we did see him, he did give me money for your care.”

“Do you think Frank took all those letters, because he thought there was money in them?”

“Dear heart, Addy. I fear you are right.” She closed her eyes. Was nothing beneath Frank Newton, she thought. “Anyway, Emma took to him right away when we all met up in Cheyenne. And after we got to Deadwood Camp, Emma was teething. When he’d come back from a poker game, he’d walk the hallways of the Grand Central with her when she was fretful.”

Stapleton stumbled to his feet and walked to the cook-pot for seconds.

“Were you crying earlier? I thought I heard something,” whispered Silas.

Lydia nodded. “I thought I was being so quiet.”

“Addy didn’t hear, but I’ve got pretty keen ears.”

“Just came over me. I hadn’t been in that wagon since all of us road into camp together. Bill had dispatched Frank. We were so happy in each other’s company.”

“What are you going to do now?” asked Hawkeye.

“Like I told Silas, despite the reservations of my parents, I am seeking to divorce Frank.” She shrugged her shoulders, “Unfortunately, no one has seen him. Don’t know if the Sioux got him. Charlie Utter makes inquiries every time he’s in Cheyenne. Charlie’s brother, Steve, is making inquiries in Colorado. But so far nothing.”

“Can’t you just call it a day?” 

“No, Hawkeye. It takes seven full years for Frank to be gone before I can have him declared legally dead. There may be little in the way of law in Deadwood, but it’s coming and if I called it a day, I could be arrested for bigamy.”

“That’s just so wrong.” Hawkeye said and stuck his stake into the ground with a good deal of force. “Jesus, here he comes. Leave any for the rest of us, partner?”

“Certainly,” Stapleton harrumphed, though clearly he couldn’t seem to remember if he had left anything in the pot.

“Addy, Emma have you had enough to eat?”

Emma shook her head. “Mo!”

“More what, Emma?” asked her mother.

“Mo, peez!”

“I’ll get it.” Addy took her little sister’s plate.

“She’s a well-behaved girl,” said Hawkeye. “Very thoughtful.”

“Thoughtful,” huffed Stapleton, “she a flimflam artist!”

“You still smarten over that fifteen cents?” chuckled Hawkeye.

“And that little one, what language does she speak, Hungarian?”

Adams laughed so hard he nearly fell over. “He’s just a baby, she ain’t even two. Speaks pretty good when she sets her mind to it.”

“Oh.”

“So what do you know about this judge?” asked Lydia.

“Granville Bennett? He’s a fine man. Born in Bloomingburg, Ohio, not too far from where my daddy’s from. He and his wife got three children – two girls and a boy – all grown. The girls, well women I guess, are newspaperwomen. The son’s a preacher. Got aspirations. Dakota Territory becomes a state, don’t be too surprised to see his name on the ballot for Congress.”

“That’s Bennett in a nutshell,” agreed Hawkeye.

“Is he a hanging judge?” asked Stapleton.

“Ain’t they all?” returned Hawkeye. “But if they find McCall guilty, he’ll be the first man to hang in the Dakota Territory.”

“Officially,” Silas added before taking a sip of coffee.

“You boiling water for more potatoes?” asked Stapleton.

“To have hot water for my children’s baths.”

“It ain’t Saturday.”

“My children go to bed clean each night.” Lydia said with arms folded. “And they wear clean clothes each day.”

“I see,” said Stapleton who may have possessed a keen sense of sight, but the acuity of his sense of smell was quite another thing altogether.

“I’ll help you with the babies, mama,” said Addy leaving Emma, whose face was covered in gravy, gnawing on the last of the cast iron pain biscuit. Emma got up off her spot on the ground, toddled over to Silas and sat down in his lap.

“Babeez, baf.”

“You love those babies?” asked Silas who was playing with a curl on the back of her head. 

“Yes, I dove du, too!” 

“I love you, too, sweetheart. You hear that Hawkeye?”

“I certainly did, sweet little thang.”

She looked over her shoulder and pointed with her biscuit. “I dove du, too!”

“Why thank you darlin’,” said Hawkeye. “I love you, too.”

She turned and pointed at Stapleton. “No.”

“Shit, you hear that?” Hawkeye howled.

“I don’t see what’s so funny,” said Stapleton.

“Shit!” shouted Emma.

“Now you’ve gone and done it. Say your prayers, Hawkeye. You’re doomed,” Silas was laughing so hard he had to wipe the tears from his eyes. Emma was laughing right along with him.

“Shit!” she shouted again. 

“The only question I have is how she’ll kill ya,” said Stapleton, pleased with himself he escaped this noose. “Poison’s a woman’s weapon, well a normal one. This one ain’t normal and she can shoot the fuzz offa peach. At least it will be over right quick.”

“Emma Polly Newton! Don’t be saying bad words. You’ll have to pay into the cuss jar,” giggled Lydia as she leaned over to pick up her daughter. 

“Penny?” She stuck her chubby little hand out at Silas. “For Addy.” Her words were long and slow. “Two pennies.”

“It’s a family of road agents to be sure,” said Stapleton before taking a sip of coffee. “This one’ll be up to nickel afore long.”

Silas reached into his pocket and produced two pennies. Emma bit each one in turn just as her sister did to Stapleton’s nickels. She made a face.

“Don’t it taste good, Emma?” laughed Hawkeye.

“No.”

“Come Emma, it’s time for your bath.”

The baby squirmed out of her mother’s grasp and toddled to the back of the wagon. “Addy, I has pennies!”

“Where did you get those pennies?”

“Siwas!”

“Why?”

“I say shit!” The baby held up two fingers.

“Emma, that’s a bad word!”

“Pennies!”

“Thank you. It’s time to take your bath.”

“No.”

“Yes, you’re all dirty. Here let me help you.”

“I believe my daughter needs reinforcements.”

With that a naked Emma shot out from behind the wagon. She was fast for her size, she would have been faster still had she not been laughing.

“Where you going little one?” laughed Silas as he leapt to his feet and followed her into the darkness.

Emma squealed when he scooped her up. “No, wun I wanna wun!” She kicked her feet. He swung the baby over his hip and headed back to camp.

“This baby is as warm as toast. How come she ain’t cold?” Silas asked as he handed Emma over.

“Even when she was first born, she enjoyed an outing in the cold,” answered Lydia. “Never caught a chill.”

“You’re lucky.”

“No, I’m blessed. The boys were born after the pest tent came down. Addy, Emma and I were already vaccinated. So we were safe, but they cannot be vaccinated until they are one.”

“They all appear to be thriving.”

“I’m a firm believer in fresh air, fresh vegetables and cleanliness are instrumental to raising healthy children.”

“They can’t eat nothing!”

“But I can.” Lydia smiled.

“Think you’re onto something.”

“There’s more stew.”

“I think I’ll help myself.”

“We’ll all have johnnycakes for breakfast.”

“I should make this trip for you more often.”

Silas returned to his seat, leaning against the tree. “There’s enough for you to have a second plate, Hawkeye.”

“Think I just might.” He filled his plate and walked to the back of the wagon. “Got the little one under control?”

“I do. Finally,” smiled Lydia.

“Good meal. I thank you kindly.”

“Thank you, especially as you provided the chicken for the pot.” Lydia pulled a nightgown over her daughter’s head. “Time for bed, Emma.”

“Tiss!” Emma puckered her lips and kissed her mother. “Tiss!” She leaned toward Hawkeye.

“She’s a sweet little thang, sorry ‘bout the swearing. I make more of an effort to behave myself.”

Lydia sighed. “If she didn’t hear it from you, there are more than a few others in the camp she’d hear it from.”

“May I speak freely to you?”

“Certainly.”

“When the grinding pain of Hickok’s death eases, and I ain’t saying it to be mean, cuz it’s the human enterprise, I’d like to recommend Silas to you.”

“He’s been a good friend to me,” smiled Lydia.

“He’s been a good friend, ma’am, cuz he’s a good man. Pulled me outta a bad spot too many times to count.” When she looked as if she’d speak, he touched her arm. “He’d be a better man with the likes of you. And if you worry, it ain’t just because you struck the color. I won’t lie to you and say a comfortable life don’t have no allure for Silas, but his real instinct if he’d admit out loud it is to be a husband and a daddy. Shit, he can’t stop talking about you and those babies. But in the end, well…it’s because of your character.” Hawkeye ground the toe of his boot into the moist earth. “He ain’t just infatuated with you ma’am, he loves you fierce and respects how you’re raising you children to be respectful and educated.”

“I see.”

“I hope you do. He shares something with you. You love Addy with all your heart. It is plain to see. But she ain’t from your body. Most folks would hold that against her, but not you. Silas won’t hold the fact none of these babies ain’t the fruit of his loins. Give him a good long, honest look when he holds one of your babes. How he smiles at’em. He loves these children, he loves you. He feels he witnessed a miracle when those boys was born.”

“Thank you, Hawkeye,” said Lydia. “I shall pray on your advice.”

The gruff looking man smiled. “I thank you, ma’am.”

“What yer reading?” asked Con Stapleton.

“Mathematics.”

“Cyphering?”

“No, not simple arithmetic, but mathematical theorems. My Uncle Bill gave me two books for my birthday written by a professor of mathematics at Columbia College in New York. We write each other. He’s like a tutor. He sends me lectures and problems, I solve them and mail them and he grades them. Mr. Merrick was kind enough to bind his lectures into a book.”

“He do that for free?”

“That would be an imposition,” said Addy. “I paid him with money from my cuss jar.”

“Given the amount of cussing in the camp, you must be cleaning up.”

“I am. Hello mama, Emma settle down?”

“She did. Washed her dress. Do you have enough light to read?”

“I was just going to put it away for the night,” the girl smiled. 

“When you do, come back here. We haven’t had a good snuggle all day.”

Addy raced to the back of the wagon and back. She climbed onto her mother’s lap. 

“Addy you are getting so big,” Lydia smiled.

“Too big to snuggle?” the child looked worried.

“Never. Should you grow to be seven feet tall, there will always be room on my lap. You will always be my little girl.” 

Addy curled up into a ball, her head under her mother’s chin. Lydia started first to hum and then to sing. It was the same tune she sang to each of her children. A made up, nonsense song, with each child having its own verse. Lydia ended the song as she always did, with a kiss on the forehead.

The three men sipped their coffee and watched the pair. In their own way, they were hard men, likely deprived in youth of a kind word, let alone the tenderness that was now in their midst. Lydia opened her eyes. Hawkeye and Stapleton had looked away, only Silas was looking straight at mother and daughter, a smile on his lips.

Lydia smiled back. Hawkeye’s small speech returned to the front of her mind. He does look to all the world like a doting father.

****

“Tain!” Emma jumped up and down in Hawkeye’s arms. “Tain!”

The locomotive came to a stop and belched. They had arrived at Fort Pierre in the dead of night. The commandant’s wife, Leonia Case, was a lovely woman with a porcelain complexion and callused hands. Lydia guessed she favored hats over gloves. They had sat up, sipping tea until dawn.

“How’d you get yours?” the older woman asked.

“Mining a claim,” said Lydia. “And you?”

“Gardening, chopping wood. I’m quite the scandal!” she winked. 

“As am I. I was hardly confined during my confinement. I travelled each day to the claim and worked it in an outfit, which defies description.”

“Do try,” smiled the older woman.

“The largest sized wading boots, a maternity shirt waist and a straw hat.”

“You must have been a sight. No corset?”

“None. It felt lovely to breathe all day long. Though I must confess, the smell of Deadwood is not very appealing.”

“I’ll bet it felt wonderful. I pray each and every night for the immortal soul of the man who invented the corset as I have no doubt he was cast into the fiery pits of hell. I knew him, you know. Your Mr. Hickok, I knew him many years ago when he was a young man serving as a scout for General Sandborn. My husband was newly from West Point and a lieutenant with the Army of the Mississippi. I have such fond memories. He was a delight to look upon. He moved like…liquid. To watch him swing into the saddle was perfection itself.”

Lydia smiled. “My move to Abilene coincided with his appointment as U.S. Marshal. Abilene was a tough town and it needed a tough man. But there was also a gentleness about him. To see him play with children…” Her eyes filled with tears.

“I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“You haven’t. It’s a relief to speak about him with someone who knew him. To speak about his life and not…”

“And not speak only of his death. And that is your terrible burden in Yankton.”

“I was there when he died,” said Lydia. “He died in my arms. I felt his heart stop.”

“I do not mean to distress you, but you are not unknown to me. Bill corresponded irregularly with my husband and me over the years. He wrote us most often when he was marshal in Abilene. He was very much in love with you.”

“And I him.”

“You chose propriety over love.”

Lydia wiped her eyes and nodded. “And broke his heart and my own. My consolation are my children.”

“When were you delivered?”

“Six weeks ago.”

“And your daughters?”

“Addy was the daughter of Wild Bill’s deputy, Mike Williams and was eight on her last birthday. Emma is nearly eighteen months. As soon as we arrive in Yankton, I am to execute Wild Bill’s last wish that Addy take his name.”

“How lovely. And where is, to borrow a phrase from Wild Bill, your shitheel of a husband?”

Lydia chuckled. “I don’t know. He took a swing at Emma while she was nursing at my breast.”

The older woman winced.

“Fortunately, he split my lip instead of her skull. Bill administered swift justice. The last I saw of Franklin Ellsworth Newton of the Philadelphia Newtons as he liked to remind all and sundry was across the back of a mare heading in the direction of Cheyenne.”

“Bet you miss that horse,” Leonia laughed. She had a low, throaty laugh in marked contrast to her rather high-pitched speaking voice.

“Nearly as much I expect as Frank Newton misses the six teeth Bill liberated.”

“Oh my. And what of Agnes? Did you ever meet her?”

“I saw her when the circus came to town. She was recently widowed and on the prowl for a second husband. Bill had one of his friends point me out and tell her we were married.”

“Did he now?”

“He did.”

“Her accounts in the press have been most spectacular.” She opened a draw and pulled out a newspaper clipping. “I kept this one because it was the most ridiculous.” She cleared her throat, ‘Wild Bill of western fame has conquered numerous Indians, outlaws, bears and buffaloes, but a charming widow has stolen the magic wand. The scepter has departed and he is as meek and gentle as a lamb. In other words, he has shuffled off the coil of bachelorhood’.” Leonia rolled her eyes.

“He was ossified drunk when he married her, and she lied about her age and his on the marriage license.”

“And he deposited her forthwith into the bosom of her family and headed straight back to the saloons of Cheyenne.”

“Yes.”

“I am so sorry for your loss. You didn’t simply lose Wild Bill, the man, you lost the dream of your life together and for that I am so sorry.”

“Thank you.”

“Thank you for indulging an old woman. There are so few women here, not that I can bear most of them, but sometimes it’s nice to be outside the company of belching and farting men.”

“Oh, I know what you mean.”

“Have you many women friends in Deadwood?”

“Not many. There’s Alma Garret. We befriended each other on the Grand Tour.”

“You don’t say. Is she working a claim?”

“She has hired men to work the claim for her. As have I now. Got as much from above the ground as I could. We sunk our first shaft last week.”

“So, you found gold?”

“Quite a bit. As to my other lady friends, perhaps you are acquainted with Jane Cannary.”

“She scouted for Custer.”

“She did.”

“I remember her. Dressed like a man as I recall. Drank like one, too.”

“Still does. And the rest are whores. Wouldn’t part company with them for the world.”

“Well, if they were good enough company for Our Lord, they should be good enough for the rest of us. Gracious, look at the time. We’ve been up all night!” As she stood up, her knees creaked in time to reveille. “Let me start on breakfast. You tend to your children.”

Silas and Hawkeye opened the exterior door of the cabin and helped Addy, Emma and Lydia inside. They were followed by her portmanteau and the carriage.

“Here, let me turn up the seat. You’ll have more room.”

“Thank you, Silas.”

“You look tired. Thought the commandant’s quarters would have had more comfortable beds than the barracks.”

“I’m sure they do, but I never had the chance to confirm it. Stayed up all night chatting with Mrs. Case.”

“Must get lonely for her. Not too many women stationed with their husbands at Fort Pierre.”

“No. And as it was, she was acquainted with Wild Bill back in his days as an Army Scout.”

“You don’t say.”

“She’s a lovely woman.”

“I liked her too, mama,” said Addy. “I shall write to her.”

“Me, too!” added Emma.

“I’m sure she’d enjoy hearing from you.”

“All aboard!” shouted the conductor.

“Best I go and make sure Stapleton’s on the train. Be back to check on you.”

“Thank you again, Silas. Shall we all eat in the dining car?”

“Won’t be as good as your cooking,” he smiled before jumping back onto the platform.

Several minutes later after a series of ‘all aboards’ the train lurched forward. There was a knock on the compartment door.

“Good morning ladies!” said a red-faced conductor. “Welcome to the North Western. Mr. Adams has kindly provided me with your tickets. Luncheon is served…” he stopped as William began to fret. “That’s tiny little one. Dear heavens! There’s two.”

“Luncheon is served whenever they say so,” joked Lydia. “Addy hand me my shawl.” She picked up her now squalling infant and prayed his brother would remain asleep. Sadly, as they often were, her prayers were unanswered.

“I’ll leave you to it. Luncheon services begins at 10:30.”

“Thank you.”

He pulled down the roller shade and tied it. The shade was a dark blue with a white border and the company’s medallion in the middle.

“He was nice,” said Addy as she attempted to soothe her brother, James Butler. “Just think in two days, we will see Alonzo.”

“That will be lovely. It has been too long since we’ve been in his company.”

Out the window, the prairie grass was green and lush and as they came around the bend a forest of quaking aspen crept up the hill, while river birch stood tall at the confluence of the Bad and Missouri Rivers.

“Why didn’t we take a steamboat?” asked Addy.

“Don’t know,” smiled Lydia. “It may take less time and this time of year, there is a risk of ice. Let’s trade.” She had only adjusted the shawl, when there was a second knock at the compartment door.

“Comfortable?”

“Very. And you?”

Silas shook his head. There’s feller smells like a polecat. Stapleton’s complaining of the cold, because every damn window is open.” He pointed to Addy.

“You’re down two bits.”

“May I?”

“Certainly,” Lydia smiled.

Emma scooted down the seat and crawled into Silas’s lap. “Are you enjoying your first train ride?”

Emma smiled. “Tain.”

“Mama, today I thought I’d work with Emma on her colors and parts of the body and then in the afternoon, I thought I’d read to Hawkeye.”

“Sounds like a busy day,” smiled Lydia as she set to burping James Butler.

“Emma, who has on a blue dress?”

The baby pointed toward her mother. “Boo.”

“And who has yellow hair?”

“Emma.” She grabbed her head.

“And who has a black cravat?”

The baby turned her head left and right. “I think she’s having a hard time with the word cravat,” said Lydia.

“Who’s wearing something black?”

The baby pointed to her mother’s shoes. “Mama.”

“Who else?” asked Silas.

The baby turned and looked at him. She smiled and tugged his cravat. “Siwas!”

“That’s a smart girl.”

“Brack!” She struggled to her feet and kissed him on the lips. Then she pointed out the window. “Geen.”

“Yes, the grass is very green.”

“Do you think we’ll have snow?” asked Addy. 

“I’m hoping not too much. Make it a long journey home. They have a plow to keep the tracks clear, but it will be slow going with the wagon.”

“I want snow for Christmas.”

Emma put her head down on Silas’s shoulder. “Nice,” she sighed.

“Yeah, it certainly is,” said Silas as he rubbed the baby’s back. “It certainly is.”

“What do you want Father Christmas to bring you, Silas?”

“Right now, can’t think of anything more I need.” He looked over Emma’s head and smiled at Lydia.


	22. Chapter 22

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Newtons, accompanied by Silas and Hawkeye, arrive in Yankton. We meet Lorenzo Butler Hickok, who did in fact represent his family at the trial of Jack McCall. Addy gets a new name.

There would be no mistaking Lorenzo Butler Hickok, he was as tall and spare as his younger brother. Unlike his brother’s luxurious curls, he wore his hair cropped short, with the occasional cowlick adding interest to his profile. He sported a mustachio and van Dyke and at forty-four his side burns had just begun to gray. Unlike his brother who dressed the sport, Lorenzo dressed the preacher in a black Prince Albert frock coat and matching pants. His shirt was a blazing white and heavily starched.

Addy saw him first. “Uncle Lorenzo,” she squealed as she ran down the length of the busy platform.

His face went from dour to a blinding smile. “Oh my dearest niece,” he said as he swung Addy up into his arms. He kissed her several times on the temple and cradled the back of her head in his large hand. “Oh my dearest.” His eyes were wet with tears.

When he saw Lydia, Emma and the carriage and with Addy still in his arms, he walked quickly toward them. “Dearest sister!” he cried. 

A photographer, in all likelihood from the Yankton Press and Dakotan, opened the tripod on his camera and steadied his magnesium lamp. There was a loud popping, then smoke and ash. Just as quickly as he arrived, he folded up his camera and skedaddled off the platform.

“Who was that?” asked Addy.

“Local newspaperman. He accosted me here just last week.”

“Silas sent a telegram to the prosecutor. This reporter either bribed someone in that office or with the telegraph office, I expect,” said Lydia.

“I have no one, but myself to blame. I gave a statement to the newspaper in Homer, so they knew when I was coming. Prepare yourself. There are newspapermen from every corner of the country and from Europe as well. Where is Silas? I must thank him for his efforts to bring you and your family here safely.”

Addy looked down the length of the platform. “Here they come, they are seeing to our trunk. Silas is the younger man in brown. Hawkeye is in grey, I’m teaching Hawkeye to read. The idiot in the clown hat is called Con Stapleton.”

“I take it you don’t care for Mr. Stapleton.”

“No, sir. He was pretending to be the new sheriff. He shot Mr. Han in cold blood. Mr. Han was a scholar in China. He had to flee the emperor,” answered Addy.

“Such intrigue,” said Lorenzo.

“We have a true sheriff now,” added Lydia. “Seth Bullock was a true friend of your brother’s.”

“I remember his name from your letters.” He looked down at the carriage. “Where are my manners? You must be Emma. What a beauty you are Emma! I am your Uncle Lorenzo.”

“Hello!”

“And these must be…” he gazed into the carriage. The babies were awake, and making gurgling sounds to one another. “Who is whom?”

“This is William Alonzo,” said Lydia pointing to the baby on the left. “And this is James Butler.”

“Beautiful, healthy boys.”

“They are. How is your mother?”

Lorenzo shook his head. “Poorly. She has taken a bad turn since James’s death. She’s not the same. Her vigor has gone. I don’t know how much longer we will have her with us.”

“Oh dear.”

“Upon my arrival, I met with William Pound. He is the prosecutor. I learned McCall and his cellmate attempted escape, but were thwarted. There have been several attempts by McCall and his attorneys to delay the trial. Yesterday, they asked for a delay until April next.”

Lydia let out a little cry.

“Do not worry dearest, sister. The judge denied the motion first thing this morning. We are to proceed.”

“Thank goodness.”

“Where are you staying?”

“At the Riverfront Hotel. It’s right across from the courthouse.”

“Excellent. I myself am not. I’m in the Merchant’s Hotel. It’s not far.”

“You must be Lorenzo Hickok,” Silas extended his hand. “I’ve many wonderful things about you and your family. Please accept my deepest condolences on the death of your brother. I’m glad you’re both here to see justice done. This here’s Hawkeye.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet both of you.” Lorenzo shook each man’s hand in turn.

“And you must be the other witness, Mr. Stapleton. Thank you for your efforts.” He extended his hand.

Stapleton puffed out his chest. “Watch yer cussing around this little one. She’s raised her rates to a nickel a pop.”

“I do not cuss, sir.”

“I see.” Stapleton rolled his eyes. “Never met a man worth his salt who didn’t cuss,” muttered Stapleton as he made his way down the platform.

Lorenzo returned to his conversation with Lydia and Silas. “The third witness, Captain Massie, has been found in Bismarck. He is to arrive tomorrow.”

“Lorenzo just told us McCall tried to break out of jail,” said Lydia. “McCall and his cellmate both.”

“I’ve asked the prosecutor, William Pound, for his permission to speak with Mr. McCall following the conclusion of the trial. He has submitted my request to Jack McCall’s attorney.”

“You just want to know why. I can understand that,” said Silas.

“I do. On behalf of the Hickok family, I wish to thank you, Mr. Adams, and Hawkeye for all the effort and care you have undertaken to bring our sister to Yankton and return her home. Her safety and the well-being of her family are of great interest to us.”

“You are most welcome, sir. Best we be going to the hotel. Get everyone settled in before these young’uns need feeding,” smiled Silas. “They can holler up quite a storm.”

Lorenzo smiled, but his eyes were sad. “It’s a lovely day, and a short walk. I will come with you.”

“Much obliged.”

“Will you be lodging at the Riverfront?”

“No, sir. Hawkeye and I keep a pair of rooms at Ma McPherson’s boarding house. It’s just two streets away. Hawkeye and I will be there every morning to take her to the courthouse. Yankton’s as safe as they come, but the courthouse ain’t far from the poor farm.”

“I noticed that on my morning constitutional.”

“How far away is the college?” asked Addy.

“What college?” asked Lorenzo as the group began their journey down the platform.

“It’s a men’s college. Silas promised to ask Judge Bennett if I might be able to attend a class for the day. If mama is in court, Hawkeye said he would take me to school.”

“Won’t that be lovely!” smiled Lorenzo.

“I can’t wait to show you my mathematics books, Uncle Lorenzo, especially the ones Uncle Bill gave to me. I shall treasure them forever.”

Several minutes later, they approached the brick façade of the Riverfront Hotel. A clot of newspapermen and photographers were milling about outside the front door.

“Damnation!” Silas muttered.

“Lorenzo warned me. But I’ll not have them taking pictures my children, especially of the boys. The flash will hurt their eyes,” insisted Lydia.

Silas and Hawkeye raced ahead.

“Gentlemen. Mr. Hickok and Mrs. Newton will answer your questions and will allow for their pictures to be taken. However, Mrs. Newton has young children, including two newborns, and she does not want them to be fearful. Please, no pictures of the children and especially the babies as the flash will injure their eyes. Are we in agreement?”

The journalists nodded, the photographers scowled. “Yeah,” one finally said.

Silas gestured to Lydia. The station porter zigzagged around the group and headed up a ramp at the back of the hotel. Before walking to the crowd, Lydia turned to her daughter. “Addy, never speak to any of these men. They are not like Mr. Merrick.”

“I understand, mama.”

Lydia took the arm of Lorenzo Hickok and walked toward the scrum of reporters.

“Good morning, gentleman. I am Lorenzo Hickok, older brother of James Butler Hickok. I have come to Yankton to see justice done for my brother, his aged and aggrieved mother and the rest of our family. I would like to introduce to you a woman I consider my third sister, Lydia Fellowes Newton. My mother likes to say she has two daughters named Lydia, one who came from her and one who came to her. My family is grateful to Mrs. Newton for her years of friendship with our family and for having journeyed from the Deadwood Camp to Yankton. She is newly delivered of two fine boys and is the proud mother of two daughters.”

“Mrs. Newton, why did you write to the prosecutor and press him to hear your testimony?” It was the reporter from the train platform. Clearly, his paid informant was in the prosecutor’s office.

“I’d be happy to answer that question. I arrived in Abilene, Kansas several months before James Butler Hickok was sworn in as U.S. Marshal for that city and lived there throughout his time in office. At the fraudulent miner’s hearing presided over by Magistrate Clagett, Jack McCall committed perjury. In his defense, Jack McCall claimed that Wild Bill Hickok, while a lawman in Abilene, murdered his brother in cold blood. In every instant Marshal Hickok took the life of a scoundrel in accordance with his duties, a hearing was held. I attended every one of those hearings. Never was Marshal Hickok accused of bodily harm to a man named McCall.”

Lorenzo interjected, “Furthermore, it will not be the word of Mrs. Newton against Mr. McCall’s, Mr. Pound, the prosecutor, will present into evidence a letter from McCall’s sister. Jack McCall does not nor has he ever possessed a brother. His story is an utter fabrication.”

“Is it true they call you the Widow Hickok?”

Lydia looked down. She could taste the bile in the back of her throat. “That moniker duly belongs to Agnes Thatcher Lake…Hickok. I was given that name by some wags in the Deadwood Camp after I organized Marshal Hickok’s funeral. I saw he was given a good Christian burial. I shooed away flies as people stood in line to pay their respects. James Butler Hickok was one of the finest men I have ever known. He was a doting godfather to Addy. I have been blessed to be considered a member of the Hickok family, so close is our bond. Addy and I have visited the Hickok home on two occasions and were welcomed warmly.”

“It was Lydia, who wrote to my mother to inform her of my brother’s passing.”

“Is it true you threw yourself into the grave?”

Lydia laughed. “No it was not true. Where do these stories come from? Gentlemen, I was seven and one-half months pregnant with twin sons at the time of Marshal Hickok’s murder. The same men who gave me the nickname of Hickok’s Widow were also the first to kindly point out I was a sight bigger than the icehouse in China Alley. His grave is on a hill. It was hot and I stumbled. I did not throw myself into the grave.” 

“Have you met Agnes Hickok?”

“I met her many years ago when her circus performed in Abilene. I do not know if she remembers me or not. She is extremely talented. When she walked the tightrope all of Abilene sat on the edge of their seats.”

“My mother has recently been in receipt of a letter from Agnes. She is deeply distraught over the loss of her husband. Her first died tragically as well, so James’s murder is all the more troubling.”

“Will she be attending the trial?”

“I do not believe so, in her letter to us, she stated she is feeling poorly and travel would be difficult at this time. Only one more question, Mrs. Newton and her family are quite tired from their long journey.”

“Is your daughter Adeline, Hickok’s daughter?”

“No, but she will be. Adeline was born to Special Marshal Mike Williams. She was given to my care, by Marshal Hickok – given to me because my daughter is a prodigy and I possess a university education. Marshal Hickok thought the little girl’s welfare and education would be best served in my care. It is her hope that during our sojourn in Yankton, she might visit your college and audit a class in mathematics.”

“You said, she will be. What does that mean?”

“In the last week of his life, Marshal Hickok took the unusual step of deciding to give Addy his name. The papers have been signed and sealed by a magistrate. They need only to be filed at the courthouse, where conveniently, we will be tomorrow. I thank you for your consideration gentlemen.”

“And on behalf of my mother, brothers and sisters, we welcome Addy into our family.”

“One more question?”

And with that, William began to wail – the gagging sobs that terrorize every new mother. His brother joined him as did Emma.

“I’m sorry gentlemen. Some other time,” said Lorenzo Butler as he attempted to create a path for Lydia and her family to the front door of the hotel.

“Where is your husband, Mrs. Newton?” shouted one reporter.

“I have no idea.”

****

Heads turned in the lobby of the Riverfront Hotel at the sound of crying children. 

“Oh dear. I am so terribly sorry,” said a man who bore more than a passing resemblance to E.B. Farnum. “We tried to keep them at bay, but the constable was overrun. Your rooms are just down here. The prosecutor’s office has provided you with our finest suite of rooms. A fire has been set. I’ll have your trunk brought presently.” He waddled in front of them, arms flapping like a duck in distress.

After the door was closed, Addy too began to cry. “Oh, mama! I did a terrible thing. I pinched William to make him cry. All those people closing around you! I had to make it stop. I’m so sorry.”

“That was quick thinking, Addy. Though I dare say your mama won’t cotton to you pinching William,” said Lorenzo Hickok.

Lydia picked up William, Silas picked up James and Hawkeye saw to Emma. 

“Come here,” said Lydia. The baby was nearly soothed. “Where did you pinch him?”

“On his foot,” the child sobbed.

“No permanent harm done, but in your resourcefulness you hurt your brother.”

“I am so sorry,” whispered Addy into her mother’s shoulder. “I shouldn’t have done it, even though it was to protect you.”

“I understand why you did it. Kiss your brother and tell him you’re sorry.”

“I’m so sorry, William. I promise never to do that again.”

Lydia looked around the room, through the open door to the bath and second bedroom. “Silas, you have outdone yourself. It is a lovely suite, but a cell is still a cell, no matter how prettily decorated. I fear given the events of this morning, we will be spending an inordinate amount of time in this room in trade for not being harassed by members of the fourth estate.”

“Vultures,” said Lorenzo running his fingers through his hair. “Jackals.”

“They are, I suppose, just doing their job,” sighed Lydia.

“And their job entails them to cast aspersions upon Addy’s birth?” asked Hawkeye. “If that scoundrel had been heeled…” He stopped. 

“The coolest heads must prevail,” said Lydia. “I’ve had a change of heart. Let me bathe my children, feed the boys. Then we shall eat our lunch and then embark on a promenade of Yankton. Would it be inopportune for us to file Addy’s paperwork this afternoon after our luncheon? And I’d like to meet with the prosecutor to thank him for his kindnesses.”

“Can’t see why not,” said Silas. “There’s a decent restaurant here in the hotel. I’ll let Prosecutor Pound know about what happened this morning. May be he can take a firmer hand with the press.”

“Thank you. Now, Lorenzo, I want you to sit down and become better acquainted with the twins.”

“You gonna make me hold one? What if I drop him?”

Lydia looked at Silas and winked. “I’ve heard that excuse before.”

“It ain’t as terrifying, sir, once you hold’em two or three times,” smiled Silas.

“Perhaps, I should wash my hands,” agreed Lorenzo.

“And Addy, if you feared I would be so angry as to forbid you from attending the college, if that is possible, do not be afraid. Your punishment will be to purchase a dime novel of my choosing, from your own money, read it and write a book report.”

The child’s lip curled. “Not a dime novel!”

“I’m afraid so. Something truly lurid and filled with purple prose, unlikely characters and nothing resembling a legitimate plot. And you are not allowed to read your mathematics books for the remainder of this week.”

“Heavens! Mama that is truly one of the worst punishments you could give to me.” And then her face took on a terrified look. “Please, mama, not Deadwood Dick!”

“I’m afraid so.”

*****  
Lydia, her family, Lorenzo, Silas and Hawkeye ate a quiet lunch far from the spying eyes of the press, which continued to populate the prairie grass outside the front door of the Riverfront Hotel. Two armed policemen stood by the front entrance and the back. They would accompany Lydia and her family to the courthouse following their meal.

“I hope all is in order,” smiled the hotelier, James Jessup. 

“You run a lovely establishment,” complimented Lydia.

“It was too bad you were full up,” said Lorenzo before taking a sip of his coffee. “Food’s a good sight better her than at the Merchant.”

“Thanks you, sir!” gushed Mr. Jessup. He sucked up compliments faster than a sponge did water. “Your dessert will be out shortly. Apple pie fresh from the oven, served with an ice cream of vanilla bean.”

“Living in Deadwood Camp, I had all but forgotten the wonders of the modern icebox,” smiled Lydia. “Now I have moved into my own home, I should invest in one.”

“Wu sell ice?” asked Silas.

“He will. If not, I had a cold cellar put in. I can harvest it myself this winter and store it there.”

“She is remarkable, isn’t she, Mr. Adams?” smiled Lorenzo.

“She certainly is, sir. Decided that much on our trip here. She corrals those young’uns in the blink of an eye. She can read, write and speak nearly as many languages as I have fingers.”

“My brother found her impressive.”

“May I ask how you plan to take your constitutional?” asked Silas, who pointed to the window and the reporters beyond with his bread knife.

“I shall ignore them. With whom have you scheduled our appointments?”

“Judge Mathis first, then Prosecutor Pounds. When I told the judge about Addy’s situation, he insisted one of his colleagues authenticate the document. They have all the particulars now. Addy’ll be Addy Hickok before this afternoon’s end. And the judge is sending a letter by messenger – that’d be Hawkeye – to Reverend Ward, the founder of the school. We should have a letter of acceptance by this afternoon as well.”

“Addy,” Lydia took a sip of coffee. “A change in your punishment. You may have access to your mathematics books in exchange for book reports on two book reports.”

“I would write a book report on ten penny dreadfuls in exchange for my mathematics books.”

“Done. One Deadwood Dick, one Varney the Vampire.”

“My brain atrophies at the thought,” smiled Addy. She smiled more broadly when a cart with their warm pie and cold ice cream arrived at the table. “That pie smells delicious!”

“Our cook is an immigrant from France,” boasted Mr. Jessup. 

Given that Jessup served as waiter, proprietor, and general odds-body, Lydia was surprised he did not cook the food himself. “It’s delicious!” cooed Lydia.

Jessup fluttered away on butterfly wings.

Addy leaned forward and whispered, “Of course, it isn’t as tasty as yours, mama.”

“Why thank you Addy. And you still must read Varney the Vampire.”

The eight-year-old screwed up her face before breaking into giggles.

****  
An hour later, the group processed to the white clapboard building which housed the courthouse and other governmental offices of the Dakota Territory.

“Mr. Adams, please bring your charges this way,” said a clerk, whose face was nearly as pasty as the white wash of the building. His hair was equally as white and his eyes a pale blue. His eyelashes were nearly invisible, but his nose was a prominent hook. He clutched a sheaf of papers in his hand, in all likelihood the papers relevant to Addy’s change in name and half skipped down the hallway.

Lydia put her hand on Silas’s arm and whispered, “Perhaps I have been in the camp too long and have become overfamiliar with the lumbering gait of miners and pimps, but everyone seems to walk here in a rather comedic manner. First Mr. Jessup who waddles like a duck and flaps his wings as if to take flight. And then there is this gentleman who scurries like some creature who heretofore has not been classified by Carolus Linnaeus.”

The clerk opened a large paneled door and disappeared.

“Yeah, never could figure out what breed of cat Linus was. He’s a nice man. A bit strange, but nice once you get past his peculiarities.”

“Does he suffer from albinism?”

“I do believe that is what it is called,” agreed Silas.

Linus Brown, a name as inappropriate as one could possibly imagine, reappeared. “Judge Mathis will see you now.”

Mathis was a large man, bearded. He enjoyed his victuals, which was apparent not only by the size of the corporation which protruded from his waist, stretching his vest to the breaking point, but the pile of six plates on a small side table. The plates looked like they had been licked clean. The room smelled vaguely of meatloaf, potatoes and Brussel sprouts. “My apologies. I have a full day today and it was either eat at my desk like a heathen or die of hunger. Mrs. Newton, I am pleased to meet you.” He stuck out a meaty hand.

“The pleasure is mine, sir. May I present Mr. Lorenzo Hickok, the elder brother of James Butler Hickok. These are my children, Adeline, who I call Addy, Emma, and in the carriage are William and James.”

“You’ve quite the brood, Mrs. Newton.” He turned and looked at Addy. “Today is a special day for you.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Let me say, while the trial will be difficult – they often are – I am happy to preside over your formal change in name. Mr. Adams tells me it was perhaps Wild Bill Hickok’s last wish.”

“It was, sir. And it is my dearest wish,” Addy extended her hands, which disappeared fully into the bear paw at the end of Mathis’s arms. “I loved him very dearly, I want it so much.”

“Addy come and stand next to me. You others can avail yourselves of a chair. Brown, come here and hold the Bible.” 

“Yes, sir.”

“Put your left hand on the Bible and raise your right hand. Do you Adeline Matthews Newton do solemnly contend you wish to assume the name of your beloved godfather, James Butler Hickok, so help you God?”

“I do, sir, so help me, God. I do so with all my heart.”

“Well then, by the powers vested in me by our president, U.S. Grant, and our territorial governor, John Pennington, I hereby convey the name Adeline Matthews Hickok upon your person.” He handed her a parchment me scroll.

“Thank you, sir.” The little girl forgot herself and wrapped her skinny arms around the judge’s bull neck and kissed his cheek.

“There, there. You know, I have a grand-daughter who is just your age.”

“You do? What is her name?”

“Adelaide.”

“That’s pretty name. It’s very close to my own.”

“She’s a pretty little girl and the apple of my eye, but alas, she is not a prodigy.” He handed Addy two envelopes. These are copies of my letters of introduction to Rev. Ward, the founder of Yankton College, and to Dr. Orson Nettles, the director of the school’s mathematics program. You are expected tomorrow at nine. A letter to that effect will be delivered to your hotel. The classes are two hours in length. You may matriculate for a full week.”

Addy’s eyes filled with tears. “I am ever so grateful, sir.”

“Prepare, yourself young lady. My daughters have a profession, just as Judge Bennet’s daughters do. They are all newspaper women. Many of your fellow students may snicker at the presence of a young girl in their midst.”

“Judge Mathis, I won’t mind. They’ll stop laughing when I tell them of my mathematical theorem. It is the first I’ve posited. I am so ever eager to discuss my theorem with Dr. Nettles as I have with Dr. Samuel Frederickson of Columbia College in New York. We are putting the finishing touches on its publication. It will be the first theorem published in the American Mathematical Society’s new journal.”

“And what is this theorem, young lady?”

“The relationship of irrational numbers and celestial mechanics. I’ve been making quite a study of irrational numbers since reading the theorems of Pythagoras. My mama has a telescope and it came with us from Abilene. I was inspired by Signore Fibonacci. He developed his theorem after viewing the natural world. Look at the lovely daisy and you will see his theorem in all its glory. Put your eye to a telescope and you will see mine.”

“I see.”

Lydia sat up straight in her chair. With the arrival of the babies, the move into her home, Emma’s teething, she had left Addy to Dr. Frederickson’s ministrations. Their letters had increased in frequency and Addy had started to use her money to send telegrams in Deadwood’s newly opened telegraph office. She had no idea her daughter’s understanding had come so far.

“Your mother is beaming. She’s quite proud of you.”

“I’m proud of her too, sir. She worked a claim all by herself while she was expecting my brothers.”

“My goodness.”

“She shoveled grit until she couldn’t stand. All for my education and that of my sister’s and brother’s. I am so proud to call her my mother.”

“I believe she feels the same.”

Linus Brown, who had scurried out through a side door, reappeared. “I fear, sir, the jury has reached a verdict.”

The judge put his meaty hands on Addy’s bony shoulders. “I cannot remember the last time I had such a lovely hour. The very best of luck to you.”

“It won’t be luck, sir. Just hard work.” Addy smiled and danced a jig. “My name is Addy Hickok and I’m going to college!”


End file.
